


A Good Man

by Irony_Rocks



Category: Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:54:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irony_Rocks/pseuds/Irony_Rocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vague season three SGA/season Ten SG-1. This story is set in an AU that kinda forks off of the Orii plotline. "There was no fight over authority. She just wanted what Cameron wanted: their people back, safe and sound."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Winner for the Stargate Fan Awards 2009: Team Choice: SG-1/SGA Crossover Ship**

\--x--

 _Springfield, Ohio._

At first glance, the warehouse was nothing but an abandoned building, the perimeter cluttered with debris and mounds of garbage. It wasn't until Elizabeth and John's team were practically on top of the structure that she began to see signs of life. No sooner had they passed the first checkpoint than she spotted over a dozen camouflaged sentries amidst the trash.

"Resourceful," Teyla noted, from up ahead.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes. Impressive. The Flintstones would be proud."

The sentry at the check point searched them and confirmed their IDs, then waved them all past the border, sending along three guards as an escort. Ronon swept past them all with a glare, then glanced at John. Elizabeth didn't need an interpreter to understand that Ronon was telling them that the guards wouldn't be a problem, if it came to it. Elizabeth sent them both a quelling look, one eyebrow arched in warning. John simply smiled back, perfectly innocent.

Elizabeth focused on one of the guards. "How many people do you have here?"

The guard shook his head. "Not allowed to discuss that with you, Ma'am. If you'll come with me, I'll take you to the person in charge."

"And who exactly is that?" John drawled in a casual voice.

The guard ignored the question. "This way, please."

As they were escorted inside and down a long corridor, they were led to a dingy office in the back of the warehouse. Several military men huddled over a small table of schematics; their conversation evaporating when Elizabeth and the rest arrived. The space was meant to hold no more than a handful of people but the congestion of nearly a dozen men made the space seem even smaller. Their group squeezed in and Elizabeth's gaze swept over the crowd and caught hold of the only familiar figure in the group.

When she regained coherence, the first thing Elizabeth thought was that Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell looked like hell.

Her second thought was that it was well deserved.

"Hey, Lizzie," he greeted, which was an odd way to welcome her considering they were nothing more than passing acquaintances. "You know, it's considered impolite to drop by unannounced from another galaxy. You don't call. You don't wri--"

"We tried to call," Elizabeth replied, stepping further into the room, and he smirked in a way that crinkled his eyes. "Didn't get an answer."

He snapped his fingers and nodded his head, a false grin stretching tightly across his face. "That's right. Earth wasn't home."

It was a lame joke, but it held a twisted sort of truth.

\--x--

Two months and eighteen days ago, the Orii had taken control of Earth. The SGC had faced the assault on two fronts: from science, as warships that outnumbered and outmaneuvered their own defenses flanked Earth from all sides and toppled cities like they were strings of dominoes. And from theology, as biblical plagues swept across the population in waves, converting or killing those that were found along its path. The two together had ravaged Earth's population in a matter of weeks.

The SGC had fallen within the first three days, in a brutal siege that left General Landry dead. Jack O'Neill had last been seen somewhere near D.C., but his current whereabouts were nothing more than conjecture and rumor. As for the rest of SG-1 – Adria, the Orii's oracle and weapon of choice, had captured them not much later.

As a consequence, the mantel of military leadership for the newly-fledged Resistance had fallen to one Cameron Mitchell, who, to Elizabeth's eyes, looked like he hadn't slept or showered in days, if not weeks.

It wasn't until much later that night, with most of the others settled into their bunks to recover from the intergalactic voyage, that Elizabeth found herself wandering into Cameron's dingy little office again. Her boots echoed off the cement floor; on her way in, she glanced briefly at the schematics of the Orii mothership sprawled across the surface of the metal workbench. The man himself was sitting across the way, marking something with a pencil along the edge, a ruler in the other hand and a black marker clenched between his teeth.

Elizabeth barely recognized him anymore. She hadn't known him well, but she clearly remembered his affable personality from previous visits Earthside. The differences between the man she'd met then and the one in front of her now were striking. Unshaven, wearing a set of BDUs that were tattered and frayed along the edges, he looked older, worn-out. It shouldn't have been surprising, but somehow it was: the weight of the last few months weighed him down in a way she'd never pictured on him before.

Elizabeth wondered just how many years a man could age in two months.

Cameron dropped the marker from his mouth, and smirked. "Oh, I know that look."

He didn't even look up to acknowledge her presence, but Elizabeth felt like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She dropped her gaze to study the blueprints, feigning ignorance. "What?"

"You're already sizing me up," Cameron answered, mouth twisting in a smug smirk as he glanced up at her. He moved to settle back in his chair, grabbed a bottle of beer from the edge of his desk, and propped his feet up. "And it doesn't seem like you're particularly impressed. I recognize the look. For a second there, I swear I was staring at one of my ex-girlfriends."

Embarrassment colored her cheeks. "You just look tired, is all. When was the last time you slept?"

"Probably around the last time I had a hot meal. Been a while." He shrugged, then glanced down at the drawings again. "So, did you bring me any presents?"

Elizabeth walked over to rest her hip against his workbench. "Fifty-six military personal, medical supplies, over a dozen of the smartest scientist in two galaxies, and one second-generation battleship with an Ancient hyperdrive and full-weapons capability," she said, cataloging the items like they were a grocery list.

"Apparently I've been a very good boy this year, Santa."

Elizabeth smiled. "John christened the ship _Aries._ "

"Where'd you find this one?"

"In the ruins of Ancient outpost on the other side of the Pegasus." She shrugged. "It happened about a month back. We had a stroke of luck."

Cameron tipped the bottle back, taking a swig of his beer. "We could use some of that, too." He tilted his head and then smiled up at her. Elizabeth would bet that many women at many points in time had fallen under the spell of Cameron's flyboy persona within ten seconds flat. There was something broken about that smile, though. Something missing from that usually effortless charm. "So, Lizzie--"

"It's Elizabeth," she cut in, "'Lizzie is a girl with pigtails at the age of twelve."

"You would have been cute with pigtails."

Elizabeth stifled an incredulous laugh. "And you'd better be drunk to use that line. How much have you had to drink, Colonel?"

He shrugged. "Only a little. This is just my captivating personality shining through. Overwhelming, isn't it?"

Elizabeth was tempted to roll her eyes, but she had a feeling Cameron was goading her more than flirting with her. "Go to bed, Colonel," she said, turning away. "Get some rest, and we'll talk in the morning when your blood isn't quite so flammable."

She was half-way out of the room when she heard his muttered response. "Sure thing, Lizzie."

She flashed him a slightly aggravated look, and kept walking.

\--x--

The following morning, Elizabeth arrived at Cameron's office to find both him and John already hunched over and working out the military details of their next attack: an upcoming offensive against the Orii battleship that, if rumors were true, imprisoned the remaining SG-1 members.

Except about a few minutes in, Cameron took Elizabeth by the elbow and pulled her aside, just out of earshot of John's hearing. He scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck, sheepishly offering, "Look, about last night, I think I was acting like a bit of an—"

"Don't worry about it," Elizabeth waved him off. "I didn't."

He openly flinched. "So I was acting like an ass? I was hoping that was just my paranoia acting up when I woke up this morning."

Elizabeth hesitated, and felt a trickle of sympathy work through her. "Well, I wouldn't call you an ass," she slowly grinned at him, lightening the mood as she added teasingly, "exactly, anyway. More like a… jerk, maybe?"

"Oh, thanks," Cameron muttered in exasperation. "That makes me feel so much better."

She caught John's eyes across the room, and he silently raised an eyebrow in place of the question he couldn't voice. She simply flashed him a quelling look that told him to mind his own business, and returned her attention to Cameron. "Look, we should get back to--"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Okay. You're sure we're--"

"We're fine," she insisted. "I promise. The only thing you implied last night was that I'd look..." she trailed off, unwilling to bring up the image of her in pigtails into any conversation ever again. "We're fine," she repeated. "No harm done."

Cameron nodded, hesistating, and when Elizabeth offered him another dim smile and turned on her heels to rejoin John, Cameron followed her and quickly refocused. "Okay, so," he resumed his spot opposite Elizabeth and John, palms planted flat against the table, "a team of four to infiltrate the mothership..."

She spent the next few hours consulting with them over the military logistics of the rescue mission, watching the byplay between Cameron and John and feeling the familiar sense of restlessness settle in like it had every other time she'd faced a siege. Except this time it was different. The siege had already begun - losses in the _millions_ had been accumulting for weeks - and Elizabeth felt like her people were so late to the game that it was almost an impossibility now to make a difference. She'd only seen bits and pieces of the devastation the Orii had wrought on her way through the backroads to Springfield, but it all seemed overwhelming and massive on a scale too big to ever undue.

Eventually, she stepped out for a break. And as predictable as breathing, leaving the office meant everybody else had a shot at her. Tasks needed to be managed, coordinated, and assigned; orders issued; and previous commands revoked. Her people needed to insert themselves alongside their flagging SGC counterparts, and they needed the transition to be as smooth as possible. The stealthy arrival of the _Aries_ had doubled the population of the warehouse literally overnight, and Elizabeth could already see the some of the changes rippling across the ranks.

She knew that Carson was tending to the wounded, that Ronon and Teyla were helping distribute supplies, and that a few of the scientists had already begun work with Dr. Lee and the others, but Elizabeth searched each one of them out, pausing long enough to get a quick update before moving on. The entire morning was spent listening to demands, allocating medical resources, reordering shifts and implementing a new ration distribution. Despite her attempts at crisis management, it couldn't have been more than a few hours before things started to chafe and tear at the seams.

She had to intervene in not one, but _three_ different quarrels between the SGC people and her own – and that was before noon. Carson asserted that some of the soldiers were borderline malnourished and needed rest - which they denied. Kate was meeting resistance in her every attempt to talk to any personnel. As for the SGC scientists and Rodney? That had gone over like a lead balloon.

She didn't have the luxury of taking hours to smooth ruffled feathers, so she handled each situation with as much delicacy and tact as she – and the situation – could afford. Still, three hours later, finishing her rounds and starting back towards Cameron's office, she could feel a headache already forming behind her right eye.

"Get a nice breather?" Cameron offered in greeting.

She forced out a deep breath and slipped on the diplomatic smile. "Just sorting out some issues." He arched an eyebrow, so she clarified. "I think people are a little thrown by our arrival."

Cameron played with the pen in his hand for a second, then shrugged. "Can you blame them? We've been fighting the Orii with sticks and stones for the last two months, and then you guys show up in a big white chariot."

"I thought that was a good thing."

"It is," he agreed, then wavered a little. "But it also feels a little like we have to defend our own turf, you know?"

Elizabeth vividly recalled how Everett, Caldwell, and Ellis had each marched into Atlantis and acted like they owned the place. This time it was her turn – the _Aries's_ arrival had been the saving grace to what was quickly turning into a lost cause.

For the most part, the only thing here she hadn't compromised on was establishing Rodney's authority over the scientists with as little fuss as possible, given, well, _Rodney._ The night before, he'd been singularly obsessed by the broken scraps of what once promised to be their only hope of an effective weapon against the Orii. Elizabeth was more than willing to give him as much room as he needed to work, but if she needed to spend extra time reassuring a group of worn-out scientists that their time and efforts were not going to be overlooked, then she was willing to deal with the extra headache.

She had more than enough experience with dealing with the delicate ego of the common genius, after all.

"You don't have to worry about that, Colonel," Elizabeth promised. "My people aren't looking to step on anyone's toes. We just want what you want."

He gave her a probing look, eyes narrowed. She met his gaze evenly, and what he saw must have appeased him, because he sighed, his defensive posture melting as his shoulders sagged.

"What I want," Cameron said, scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck in frustration, "is a home cooked meal, SG-1 back, and somebody to figure out how to kick the Orii's ass from here to oblivion. Not necessarily in that order."

"Well, as luck would have it, we're working on two of those requests as we speak."

"No home-cooked meal, though?"

Elizabeth shrugged impishly. "Sorry."

"Eh, well, can't ask for everything, I guess."

She pulled up beside him, eyes sweeping across the array of weaponry splayed out across the room. It was hard to block out the voice in her head that pointed out that the plans they had in store were ridiculously risky. She brushed her fingers across a P-90 and reminded herself of all the other suicidal missions they'd survived.

Rescuing SG-1 from an Orii battleship was as probable as walking on water. She knew that. But no one knew as much about the broken weapon against the Orii as Samantha Carter. Rodney could figure it out, yes, but that'd take time. Time millions of people on this planet didn't have. Saving SG-1 was just the first step towards a larger goal.

Elizabeth glanced furtively at Cameron, and saw the barest hint of anxiety etched in his eyes. She tried for a confident tone. "We'll get them, Colonel. My people are good at what they do. We'll get them out."

"Cam, not Colonel," he corrected, and barreled on before she could respond. "And I'm not questioning their skills." He turned away from the weapons and towards her, his tone blunt. "Truth is, I wish to hell I could go along for the ride. I'm not cut out for this General-stay-back-and-lead-from-the-trenches bullshit."

"It's not bullshit," Elizabeth replied firmly. "You're the ranking military officer here. No one knows the SGC as well as you do right now. Everybody's looking to you to lead them."

He rolled his eyes. "I can lead. I've done that for a couple of years now and--"

"That's a different type of leading," Elizabeth countered. "Leading an off-world team? That takes a skill I've always envied and, honestly, never precisely understood, but it's nothing like the responsibilities you're carrying now."

"Yeah. Now I get to stay back and watch from a comfy distance as others head into dang--"

"Right now, you have the most important job in the Resistance," Elizabeth cut in. "You're the man in charge, whether you like it or not."

He huffed a breath. "It's firmly in the "not" category."

"Tough. Deal." He threw her a look, a little annoyed. Her voice softened in sympathy, though it was no less resolute. "Believe me, Col--Cameron. I get your frustration. Staying back and watching is the hardest part of the job, but somebody needs to be here to make the hard decisions. You can't do that if you're dead."

Cameron shook his head in frustration, no less aggravated than he had been thirty seconds ago. "How the hell do you deal with it? I've never asked someone to do something I wasn't willing to do myself."

She took a moment to mull over her answer, a thousand different things coming to mind. "I do everything in my power to ensure they come back to me, whole and unscathed. I make sure we never make the same mistakes twice." She paused, then addressed him as one leader to another. "But truthfully? When I'm waiting for them to come home, I mostly hold my breath and I pray for their safe return. Sometimes that's all I can do."

He quirked an eyebrow.

She shrugged. "Funny thing is, I was never remotely religious before Atlantis. Now? I pray every day."

\--x--

Less than twenty-four hours later, Elizabeth rubbed the palms of her hands across her bare forearms, fending off goosebumps from the chill outside. Across from her, the puddle-jumper rested on the asphalt in front of the warehouse, the ramp open at her feet. She glanced inside at the group of marines settling in, and then watched as John's team made their way out of the building with Cameron in tow.

Somewhere above them, the _Aries_ hovered, cloaked and ready for a daring rescue mission that could get everyone on it killed.

Elizabeth stepped clear of the take-off area. "Stay safe," she offered softly.

"Always try," John muttered with a cheeky grin, and then trudged up the hatch of the puddle-jumper. "Don't worry about us too much," he tossed over his shoulder.

She glared at his retreating back – they both knew she would. She watched as the rest of the team joined him, Rodney in front, Teyla and Ronon settling in to the back seats. The marines nodded to her and she watched silently as the hatch closed. A moment later, as the puddle-jumper lifted off and disappeared behind its cloak, she felt Cameron step up beside her.

He didn't say a thing. Somehow, she felt a little better anyway.

\--x--

The work didn't stop simply because John's team had left.

"We've got Orii movement about a thousand miles away from us," Cameron explained as they walked down the corridor together. Elizabeth took the papers from his hand and scanned the intelligence reports. "If they keep converting the locals as they go…," Cameron trailed off, his mouth twisted with the bitter aftertaste of the statement, and shook his head. "We've got another a couple of days, a week maybe, before they're bearing down on our location and crawling up our ass."

"Colorful, Colonel."

"Sorry," he shrugged sheepishly. "We've got to make plans to move."

Elizabeth hesitated for a moment. "John knows to rendezvous with us here."

Cameron continued ahead and opened the steel door at the end of the hallway, waiting to let her pass first before he followed her footsteps. "You guys found our little merry band on Earth once. They can find us again."

That much was true. Rodney could track them down anywhere on Earth. Of that, Elizabeth was certain.

She flipped through the papers as she walked to the other side of his desk. Pulling one sheet from the stack, she considered the geographic coordinates of not one, but three different Orii battleships hovering over North America. John's team was trying to infiltrate one of them at this very moment. The _Aries_ didn't register on the scans, but it was up there too, right alongside the Orii ships. Those Ancient cloaks were a thing of wonder.

"I'd prefer…" she paused for a second, well aware that she was treading thin ice. "I'd prefer if we held this position for as long as we could. Give John and his team as much time as we can to get back here with SG-1."

Cameron paused, eyebrow lifted in a quirk that spoke of every doubt Elizabeth had overruled in her own head. "We stay here long, we might risk--"

"I know," she agreed. "But if we see movement close to here, we can be moving in what? A couple of hours?"

"Less," Cameron countered. "You light the right fire under some of these scientists, you can get 'em to square dance. They'll move quickly. I'll make sure of it."

"Then let's stick to this location for as long as we can."

Cameron held her gaze for one long moment, and then paced the length of the room, agitated and restless, plainly trying to get a clear handle on the situation. "I don't know," he muttered. "That might, you know…"

She could see the internal debate going on in his head as he paused, weighing the pros and cons in his head so clearly Elizabeth could almost read his mind. She did nothing but watch him as he stood, tension mounting in his shoulders.

They hadn't had the conversation yet – the one that clarified who outranked whom. It was a glaring omission, but Elizabeth hadn't wanted to get into a pissing contest over authority immediately upon arrival. It had taken her this long to realize Cameron hadn't brought up the issue for the same reason. Nothing was official, but with the Atlantis contingent outnumbering the SGC, they both had say-so. Except, put bluntly, this was the end of the world as they knew it, and that was certainly military jurisdiction if there ever was one. She didn't want to fight over authority, though. She just wanted what Cameron wanted: their people back, safe and sound.

His shoulders dropped with a harsh release of breath. "Fine. We wait."

She nodded in agreement. "We wait."

\--x--

After two nights of waiting, the lack of sleep was starting to get to Elizabeth. She knew she should rest while she could, but her subconscious, apparently, had other plans. It was close to dawn when Elizabeth gave up pretending sleep and got dressed. The full moon cast its glow outside the windows. As she slipped on her jacket and crept along the silent hallways towards the mess, she was struck with how quiet and still the warehouse was.

The building was neither remarkable nor beautiful - nothing like Atlantis - but to Elizabeth, the parallels were clear. Once again, she was fighting alongside refugees and soldiers in a war against an enemy that seemed invincible. Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the woman that had once took opposition against most things military.

Somewhere, some deity had an overdeveloped sense of irony. Elizabeth was sure of it.

"Hey."

Elizabeth stopped short, and found she was in the mess. Cameron was hunkered over a bowl of cereal, his feet propped against the edge of the folded chair opposite him, his shoelaces undone. He hadn't shaved – she'd been there long enough to observe that it was hit or miss each day as to whether Cameron bothered with the task.

"Couldn't sleep?" she offered.

He shrugged. "Pull up a chair. I could use the company."

"You know," Elizabeth remarked casually, pushing his feet off the chair as she settled in, "Our supplies included things like shaving cream and razors. I do believe we even had a comb or two--"

"A comb?" Cameron boasted in an exaggerated tone. "Really? I had just assumed, you know, given Sheppard's hair, that you guys were in short supply."

Elizabeth stifled a laugh, shaking her head as she reached across the table and stole the box of cereal. "I'm just saying…"

Cameron smirked. "What? You telling me I'm not eye-candy anymore?"

Elizabeth paused, _really_ looking at him. Even dark with day-old stubble, his clothes wrinkled and worn, and one of the worst cases of bedhead she'd ever seen, he was still a handsome man. There was no denying that.

"I never said that." She was _flirting_ , she thought, surprised.

By the fifth morning, they had settled into a routine. Elizabeth would wake long before sunrise, and Cameron would be waiting up for her in the mess hall with two bowls of cereal. Elizabeth would pad in, her hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, and they'd eat and talk until it was officially morning and the demands of their command required their attention.

Most days were pretty similar: Lorne needed to update them on the newest military rotations, Carson needed their ear regarding the latest medical concerns, and Dr. Lee, Elizabeth thought, needed to explain their ongoing experiments – assuming she understood his ridiculously convoluted syntax. The entire time, they both kept one eye each on the horizon for the _Aries_. The entire time, she held a silent prayer in her thoughts.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, she started flirting with Cameron like crazy.

Elizabeth wasn't even sure how it had started, despite the fact that she certainly wasn't a saint. She was just as much of a warm-blooded female as the next girl over. And if her position demanded above and beyond the call of duty when it came to the sacrifice of her personal life, well, that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy some harmless fun. After all, she was highly aware of the fact that she flirted with John more than what could be considered strictly friendly.

Cameron, she thought, was no different.

"Chocolate chip ice cream," Cameron declared.

"Strawberry."

"Braves."

"Yankees," Elizabeth replied.

Cameron flinched. "You've got to be kidding me?" he muttered in horror. "The Yankees?"

She shrugged and moved on. "Casablanca."

"Die Hard."

She rolled her eyes and thought for a moment about her next response. "Pizza, with extra cheese."

He shook his head in exasperation. "You need pepperoni and sausage, too."

"The Beatles."

Cameron nodded in agreement, slapping a hand down on the table as his face broke into a wide grin. "Finally, something we can agree upon."

\--x--

A couple of hours later, the laughter had faded.

When Cameron walked through the front gate with blood caked on his shirt, Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks and stared. Behind him, a group of haggard individuals staggered in together. Elizabeth was confused: Cameron had gone out for recon, not on a rescue mission. Her eyes swept over the crowd, all of them prematurely aged by the fatigue and exhaustion etching deep lines on their faces.

"Refugees trying to make it to safety for the last few weeks," Cameron said as he passed her by. "Four of them died in the last hour."

She spotted body bags being carried along the back of the crowd. She stood there, rooted to the spot long after Cameron had stalked back into the warehouse, her shoulders tense and her eyes soft. Elizabeth's gaze landed on one of the children straggling in behind the rest of the group – a boy who looked to be seven years old, tops.

She'd find out, later, that he'd been orphaned that morning.

\--x--

The sixth night, they agreed, would be their last in the warehouse. They'd hold their position for another twenty-four hours and then they'd have to leave. The Orii troops were still a few days away, but they were closing around the northeastern states faster and faster, and it was only a matter of time before the Orii plague would sweep through the population of Springfield.

They had to leave, and that, in turn, left Sheppard's team on their own. With every passing hour, Elizabeth found it harder and harder to ignore the doubts and paranoia festering in her head. They should have been back by now, bringing SG-1 with them. They should have made it back days ago if things had gone according to plan.

She decided to catch Cameron before she turned into bed that night, but he wasn't at any of his usual hunts – just one more thing adding to the overwhelming sense of wrongness. Cameron had been acting strangely ever since he'd returned with the refugees. He'd been distant with her and terse with his people, vanishing from sight as soon as he was able.

Tugging her jacket tight against her chest, she searched the darkened grounds for him and found him in one of the back, empty rooms. A few boxes of odds-and-ends supplies lay open at his feet; when Elizabeth approached him from behind, she was surprised to smell alcohol in the air, rank and heavy.

"Cameron," Elizabeth called, voice low.

He turned around slowly. Her eyes softened as they took him in, settling on the bottle of scotch dangling from one hand. She was abruptly reminded of the first night she had seen him here, a week ago. Only a week. It seemed like ages, the slow crawl of time intensified by the sheer number of things happening every day. He looked just as worn out as when she'd first arrived, and she wondered how he managed to crawl himself out of this state for an entire week, only to fall back in now. He'd been so much better in between.

"Hey, Lizzie," he greeted, his words a touch slurred as he waved casually with his free hand.

She stood there, rooted to the spot and tilting her head to one side, considering. At length, she simply shook her head. "Don't do this, Cameron."

"Do what?" he tossed back. "Get thoroughly shit-faced? Relax, Lizzie. Anyone ever tell you that you need to loosen up?"

"Colonel—"

"Stop with the Colonel," he cut in, voice edged so hard that Elizabeth recoiled.

She held his gaze for a second, and then her eyes hardened as she strode towards him. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked, changing tactics. "You know that we might need to move if the Orii--"

"If the Orii come," Cameron snapped, "then they're gonna come. And there ain't much we can do to stop it. Might as well enjoy what we—" She tore the bottle from his hands before he could react. "Hey! Give that back!"

He reached clumsily for the bottle, but she stepped back and dangled the bottle behind her back. She couldn't have pulled it off if he hadn't been drunk; frankly, at a time like this, the fact that his responses were so slow presented a whole host of problems well beyond his reaction time.

"Are you really going to do this?" she demanded. "Now?"

"Now's a good a time as any," Cameron offered, feigning a carefree tone. "Not like any of what we do matters. Not like any of this," he edged back and kicked a random box lying open on the ground, "matters."

"How much have you had to drink?"

"I'm still conscious, so obviously not enough."

She released a breath and looked away. "We need to get coffee in you, now."

"Coffee?" he repeated harshly, then paused. His eyes darkened with a warning. "You know what? I think I actually saw a coffee pot somewhere in here." She did nothing but watch, a little bewildered, as he dropped to a knee beside one of the boxes marked "kitchen supplies" and quickly started rummaging through the contents. She called to him but he didn't respond. "Yeah, yeah, it's in here somewhere—" he stopped short when he encountered the sought-after item: a dusty glass coffee pot. "Here it is."

"That's nice," Elizabeth offered, nonplussed. "Now please get up—"

Cameron flung the coffee pot towards the back wall and the glass shattered. Elizabeth jumped at the impact, her heart skipping a beat as she stared at the shards on the cement floor and then turned wide-eyed towards Cameron. He was already digging through the box again.

"Won't need that," he commented lightly, his head bent down. He emerged with another item in his hand. A blender. "Won't need this either."

She wasn't as surprised this time when he hurled the thing against the wall. It smashed against the dingy walls and joined the remnants of the coffee pot. Cameron kept rummaging through the box, hurling object after object at the wall. She tried to get in a word edgewise, but Cameron had worked himself up into a storm.

Finally, he grabbed the box around the edges and flung the entire thing across the room. "We don't need any of this, do we?!"

He reached for the next box and Elizabeth stepped forward to block his path. "Stop it, Cameron! Calm down!"

"Why?" he roared. "Give me one goddamn reason why!"

She stared at his wild eyes, and held his stare as evenly as she could. "Because you're starting to scare me," she said quietly. "Because you need to pull it together now. Because I _need_ you to pull it together."

Something about her words or her tone of voice - half firm, half pleading - must have made it past his anger, because he stilled. His eyes softened for a split second as he stared down at her, his breathing heavy, but then his face swiftly closed off. "Just give me the bottle and leave, Elizabeth."

Her eyes narrowed. "No."

"Give me the bottle, Lizzie."

"Stop calling me that," she muttered, aggravated. "You've had enough to drin—"

He reached for the bottle again and managed to wrap one hand around her waist. Crushing her body to his, he reached for the bottle with his free hand. His fingers curled around the glass and snagged the scotch. "That's mine," he insisted.

"Cameron, let go—"

"--And I think I'll just take it back."

She tried to snatch the bottle back. "Cameron, that's enough…"

She trailed off when she realized he wasn't staring at her eyes any longer; his gaze focused on her lips, and Elizabeth was, suddenly, intensely aware of just how close they were standing. His face was mere inches away, his breathing still heavy. Staring into his eyes, she saw the precise moment when they darkened in desire. Her mind froze and her pulse sped up, and she knew exactly what was coming probably before Cameron had even made the decision.

She pulled back, but just barely too late: Cameron caught her around the wrist and dragged her body back towards him. With a singular, unrepentant demand his mouth took over hers in a kiss that left no room for protest. The power of it was immediate and shocking; Elizabeth froze for a second, and then Cameron's tongue invaded her mouth and made her weak in the knees.

His kiss was explosive, and it was only the tinge of alcohol on his breath that reminded her of the situation at all. Even knowing that, it was barely milliseconds before pure desire took control and surged through her, tension and want spiraling and coiling tight in her body as she arched into his touch without conscious thought. His mouth was full of the bitter taste of scotch, but suddenly Elizabeth felt like _she_ was the one that had been drinking. Her hands threaded through his hair and the sensations overruled her all too easily as she fell into a kiss more potent than any she could remember.

The sound of glass shattering jarred Elizabeth out of the embrace, and she pulled back, dazed, to find the edge of her pants soaked with alcohol. The bottle of scotch lay broken near their feet.

She pulled free from Cameron's arms and he let her go without protests, looking a little shell-shocked himself. She stepped back, flustered. "I-I," she stammered, retreating a few more steps. "I have to go."

She turned on her heels and fled the room without waiting for a response.

\--x--


	2. Chapter 2

\--x--

The next morning, Elizabeth kept herself too busy and preoccupied by the move to offer Cameron the chance to… respond, in whatever way he preferred, to the events of the previous night. As far as she was concerned, Elizabeth was completely willing to blame the alcohol and forget the entire thing occurred.

It was easier said than done, of course. It had been years since she'd been kissed like that by a guy, and she'd always been an absolute sucker for first kisses. But adding a relationship to the mix would only make the current godforsaken mess even _more_ complicated. She couldn't afford to split her attention like that – even less so when the person in question happened to share her command. This was one of the many reasons she'd never entertained anything beyond idle speculation regarding John.

Things would be too complicated. Too messy. They couldn't afford to make mistakes just because their hormones got the better of them.

But God, that had been a good kiss.

She tried to shake the thought from her head, but it proved persistent as she worked through the rest of the morning. Still, besides one brief and awkward greeting at dawn, she had avoided Cameron expertly, which raised a few eyebrows from the others considering they'd been attached at the hip for the last week. Still, people had to set their curiosity - if there was some and not just Elizabeth's imagination being paranoid – aside, in favor of packing the last of the supplies and loading the dozen trucks seized from local hubs for use in the move.

When Lorne informed Elizabeth that one of the storage rooms had been ransacked, Elizabeth kept her face studiously blank and told the major to ignore it. In return, Elizabeth ignored the way Cameron's eyes followed her from across the room whenever they were in close proximity, as well as the fact that he looked like he was working through the worst of a rough hangover.

She fleetingly entertained the notion that he might not even remember, and then had to tamp down the rush of confusion the thought inspired. A part of her wanted him to remember. A part of her didn't. In any case, it didn't matter. She read enough in his awkwardness and hesitation around her to know he remembered everything perfectly.

They hadn't done anything but share one kiss, and things were already being affected. It confirmed to Elizabeth that anything beyond friendship and professionalism was the wrong move.

All of that rationalization wasn't worth a damn penny when Cameron grabbed her by the elbow and propelled her into the truck he was driving. She tried to protest but was quickly overridden when Cameron prodded her into the passenger seat, told the marines in the back to get out and find another ride with one of the other trucks, and stalked around to the driver's side.

The door slammed shut, and Elizabeth was intensely aware that she was now left alone with Cameron for the duration of their five hour trip to Chicago.

"This is going to be a long drive," Cameron remarked idly, starting the engine, "if you keep giving me the cold shoulder."

Elizabeth sputtered. "I have not been giving you the cold shoulder."

Cameron rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

Elizabeth snapped her seatbelt in place and stared ahead at the empty road and the overcast sky, full of thick, looming clouds. It matched her mood perfectly. This was the last thing she wanted - could handle - right now. Things weren't complicated enough that they had to drag _this_ into the picture?

"Just drive, Cameron."

His fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel, and he nodded. "Whatever you say, Lizzie."

"Stop calling me that!"

He released a forceful breath and dropped his voice, muttering under his breath, "This is going to be a fun ride."

Elizabeth pretended not to hear him, just like she pretended to feign exhaustion and fall asleep within the first half hour of the trip.

\--x--

In the second hour, an explosion rocked the road violently and Elizabeth's eyes snapped open in alarm.

"In-coming!" Cameron hollered before the next boom.

He swerved the truck so hard that Elizabeth slammed into the dashboard. Bracing against the console, she pushed back and recovered just in time for Cameron to scream at her to hold on, but Elizabeth's eyes caught movement in the sky above and she craned her neck and followed the blur of something whiz past the air.

"I said hold on!" Cameron hollared, reaching over to pull the strap of her seatbelt taut across her body just as another explosion rocked the truck. Up ahead of them a few trucks took direct hits from a blue-tinted blast and burst into flames. "Son of a bitch!" Cameron roared. "There's two of 'em!"

Elizabeth sucked in a harsh breath, hands latching onto the armrest in a vicious grip. She forced herself to ignore the stab of panic and grief as she turned to Cameron. "Two of what?" she screamed.

"Orii gliders!" Cameron hollered back, his eyes focused on the road ahead. "Just hold on!"

Cameron swerved the truck just as another blue ray struck the pavement and the car next to them was hit and launched clear into the air. It flipped over and came crashing back down on its side, skidding across the pavement in front of them and just narrowly avoiding a head-on crash as Cameron veered left hard. The car exploded as Cameron spun away, and the blast sent shockwaves out that slammed into the truck.

Elizabeth could do nothing but desperately hang on.

The intensity and brilliance of the bright flashes made her eyes sting and she screwed them shut, breathing heavy, face stung with the heat of explosions. Dear God, their people were getting slaughtered.

"Elizabeth, get your head down!"

She obeyed instinctively, ducking her head and shielding her face. Heart pounding in her ears, breath labored, hands trembling with adrenaline, Elizabeth kept her eyes screwed shut and braced herself for impact. The truck bounced and rocked as the tires screeched off the pavement and hit dirt, and the deafening sounds of chaos on all sides assaulted Elizabeth until all she heard was a loud ringing noise in her ears.

The explosions chased them for an endless amount of time, until, suddenly, Elizabeth realized that the heat of the blasts seemed farther and farther away. Cameron continued to drive like a mad man, pushing the accelerator to the max as the truck bounced and practically vaulted over the rough terrain. When she finally lifted her head back up and looked, they were speeding downhill, over a dirt path through farmland. The Orii gliders and explosions were a diminishing image in the rearview mirror.

It took her a second to realize that Cameron was yelling at her, the sound of his voice barely registering above the ringing.

"What?" she screamed back.

"You okay?" Cameron shouted, anxiously sweeping a gaze in her direction.

"Yeah," Elizabeth answered, still a little shell-shocked, and then dropped her voice when she realized she was still yelling. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she nodded quickly, and steadied her voice. "Did we lose them? Have we lost them?"

"We've lost everybody," Cameron answered, frustrated.

Elizabeth's eyes widened as she grasped the implications. As she looked back, she realized the gliders weren't the only things left behind in Cameron's rush to reach safety. Their people had scattered like the wind: the trucks had disbanded and taken off in every direction.

Cameron and Elizabeth were on their own.

\--x--

Their truck broke down twenty minutes later in the middle of a wheat field.

Cameron got out and inspected the vehicle; when he finished, he came back to the cab to report. "We're got a rapid oil leak. The explosions damaged the bottom of the engine." He flung a dirt washcloth onto the dashboard inside. "We're screwed."

Elizabeth responded with an eloquent "Oh," then regrouped and tried again with more hope. "You sure you can't fix it?"

He shook his head. "Not with what we've got." Elizabeth curbed her disappointment, but Cameron must have seen it anyway because he rolled his eyes. "You've gotten too used to geeks."

She raised an eyebrow. "Why do you say that?"

"Because geeks can fix everything," he muttered in exasperation. "Hell, Sam could somehow MacGyver this thing with gun parts and get it to work."

He said it lightly, but Elizabeth picked up his undertone. She knew exactly what he was thinking. Sam _really_ could get them out of this mess. The absence of his team must have been as jarring to him as the absence of John's team was to her. Things just felt off without them, and it was especially in times where they weren't around that Elizabeth felt their importance all the more.

They took a few minutes to gather some supplies from the back of the truck; throwing the stuff into backpacks, they took off on foot in a randomly chosen direction. After a few minutes of silence, Elizabeth voiced the question in her head, "You think they're okay?" She knew she didn't need to clarify who she was talking about.

Cameron released a breath and stared off in the distance, hoisting the backpack higher over his shoulder. "I don't know. They're SG-1, you know? They always pull through."

Elizabeth thought the same thing about John's team.

She tried to refocus but her thoughts immediately jumped to the rest of her people. That situation provided no comfort either. "I saw a few of the trucks back there get--"

"I know," Cameron cut in. "Don't think about it. There's nothing we can do for them."

It seemed to Elizabeth that they kept not-thinking about a lot of things. An entire planet under siege, and Elizabeth kept telling herself to mourn for the losses later, even in the midst of confronting the fallout. The death toll just kept rising.

Seeing the systematic destruction of so many cities, so many towns, so many people – there was no way it wouldn't cut her straight to the heart. She tried to ignore it, tried to block out the thoughts that whispered of chaos and loss while she tried to impose some damage control. But worldwide, who knew how many had already died?

And here they were, the leaders of the Resistance, lost in the middle of nowhere.

She forced herself to regroup. "We follow the plan, right? Meet up with everybody else in Chicago."

"There's a problem with that," Cameron pointed out, as if Elizabeth could have missed it. "We're still another three hours away, by truck. And, you know, just our luck - no truck."

Elizabeth tossed a half-hearted glare in his direction. "Yeah, I noticed." She sighed. "Maybe there's a farmhouse somewhere nearby, and if there's a farmhouse, there might be people. Or a truck of some type. If we can find it—"

"That's a lot of 'ifs' in there," Cameron remarked wryly.

"I know, but we don't have an overflow of options here."

"At least the worst is behind us," Cameron offered lightly.

Elizabeth smacked him in the shoulder, hard. "Why the hell did you just say that? Now something worse is going to happen."

He rubbed his shoulder and threw her an incredulous look. "Never took you for the superstitious type."

She responded reflexively, "It's not superstition, just common sense."

He flashed a cheeky grin, purposely goading her. "Oh, c'mon! What could be worse than being run off the road by the Orii?"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the sound of thunder echoed in the distance. The thick clouds up above suddenly flashed bright with lightning, and a moment later, an outpouring of rain started pelting down on top of them. She turned to Cameron as the first drops of rain fell, and glared.

Cameron quickly pulled his jacket off and held it over their heads, huddling closer to her as he dropped his voice and shrugged sheepishly. "This is, in no way, worse than an Orii attack," he argued.

Elizabeth conceded the point, but did nothing but continue to glare as she huddled closer to him under the meager protection of his jacket. Too close, she realized, because as Elizabeth watched Cameron lick a drop of water off his lips, her mind flashed to the kiss from the previous day and she suddenly wanted very, very badly to taste the water on his lips.

The thought blind-sided her, but she quickly recovered and pushed away, stepping away from the canopy of his jacket. She got thoroughly soaked for her troubles.

Cameron raised an eyebrow.

"There's no use in both of us trying to huddle under one jacket," Elizabeth argued.

Silently lamenting the absence of her own jacket, she hugged her arms across her chest and brushed aside her wet bangs as she started walking again. Her t-shirt was already soaked and clinging to her, and she knew she'd be shivering in no-time.

"Here," Cameron said, catching up to her and holding his jacket out. She stared at the offering, and shook her head. "Take it," he insisted. "This is no worse than off-world conditions. I'm used to it."

"No, that's not necess—"

"Just take it, Lizzie."

She let him get away with that one, only because she felt guilty as she reluctantly reached out and took the jacket from him. As she shrugged it on and hugged it to her body, Cameron fell into step beside her. They trudged on through the wet fields side by side. The experience quickly grew miserable, but Elizabeth kept the complaints to herself.

"Well," Cameron muttered, "look at the bright side."

"What's that?"

"At least you're speaking to me again."

\--x--

Four hours later, Elizabeth thought she'd never be so exhilarated to see a dilapidated, old shack in her entire life, but she was wet, freezing and miserable. In her eyes, the shack was a thing of absolute beauty. They rushed in out of the pouring rain, and Elizabeth felt rather like Sedge as she stepped into the shelter and shook the water from her hair. Cameron smirked at her, and she rolled her eyes before she froze, inspecting him under better light.

"Cameron," she breathed in horror. "You're blue."

He turned on his heels and shrugged as if it was no big deal, but she caught him by the shoulder and forced him to turn back to her. His lips were ice blue; his skin was pallid and sickly white. He was shivering, too. She hadn't noticed any of this outside, what with the rain, but now it was glaringly obvious and Elizabeth felt a spike of guilt as she remembered the jacket she had taken from him.

Ignoring her own chill, she placed the back of her hand against his forehand and found his skin icicles to her touch. "You're freezing," she gasped, pulling her hand away with panic slowly worming its way through her. "Let's get a fire started."

Cameron nodded, teeth chattering as he muttered obediently, "Yeah, okay."

She tried to help, but Cameron knew way more about starting a campfire. She helped gather the wood from the corner of the shack and watched as Cameron hunkered down on the floor, rubbing cold hands together as he feebly tried to generate a fire. The entire time, she watched him with concerned eyes and felt completely horrible.

"I'm fine," he claimed, but his chattering teeth did nothing to ease her concerns. "Just give me a few minutes by the fire, and I'll be good as--" Her hands moved to the hem of his shirt and began tugging upwards. "Whoa! Whoa! What are you doing?"

She glared, stating the obvious. "I'm getting you out of these wet clothes."

She wasn't surprised in the slightest when he smirked. "So you're asking me to strip?"

Closing her eyes against a litany of responses, she decided she didn't care about any of them as long as Cameron moved faster. "Yes, fine," she agreed wryly, "You caught me, Cameron. This entire day was just an orchestrated ruse to get you naked." She silenced him with a sharp glare when he opened his mouth. "Innuendos later," she cut in, "clothes off now."

Even as he began to pull the edges of his shirt up, he couldn't help one last remark. "And all these years," he muttered, teeth chattering, "I always thought it was the other way around."

She helped him tug off the shirt the rest of the way and plainly ignored the sight of him shirtless in favor of the fact that he was still ice-cold and blue. His damp hair was sticking up in every direction and trying its damndest to do an impression of John's hair. Then Cameron sneezed violently and Elizabeth jumped back. In her zealousness to get him out of the damp clothes, she forgot modesty completely and reached for his belt, fully intending on helping him strip to speed the process along.

But Cameron caught her hand in his and stilled them, and had he been capable of blushing under the circumstances, she was fairly sure he would have gone red as a beet. "Elizabeth," he muttered, a little embarrassed, "I got this, really."

She flushed and nodded. As she stepped back to give him some space, she glanced around, taking in the interior of the shack. An array of farming tools were stacked to one side, and as Elizabeth crossed the room and rummaged through them, she found a small chest hidden behind them. It was locked tight when Elizabeth tried to open it, and after a moment she gave up – which was when she caught sight of a sleeping bag in the corner.

She turned back to Cameron and found him stripped down to a pair of boxers. He crouched near the fire, arms pressed tight to his chest as he shivered.

"Cameron," she called, and quickly grabbed the sleeping bag. "Get inside this."

Cameron didn't argue, didn't say a word, just followed her directions blindly when she laid the sleeping bag open by the fire. His silence and compliance concerned her more than the tinge of blue marring his lips; suddenly, she didn't care about what little was left of the damn line of propriety anymore.

She grabbed the wet corner of her shirt and tugged the material up over her head and off her body.

Cameron stared. "Lizzie--"

"You need body warmth," she cut in, unable to maintain eye contact.

Figuring this was a lot like pulling off a band aid, Elizabeth continued to strip as quickly as possible. She unzipped her fly and pushed the damp cargo pants off of her hips, stepping out of them as ice cold air hit wet skin. She kept her black bra and panties on, of course, and tried to ignore Cameron's eyes at they raked over her body in frank appreciation he couldn't hide.

She halted briefly as she stepped closer to the fire, near Cameron and the sleeping bag. As he stared up at her, she had a fleeting moment of panic.

"You don't have to do this," Cameron offered.

She shoved her anxiety aside and crouched down, crawling into the bag with him. "Yes," she breathed softly. "I do."

Cameron shifted aside and she settled in awkwardly, their limbs quickly tangled together in the sleeping bag. She tried to find a comfortable arrangement but the only real solution left her body draped over his. Wet skin pressed against wet skin. Intensely aware of every shaky breath Cameron took beneath her, she reached for the edges of the sleeping bag and held them tight in a closed fist. Her chest was completely flush with his and for the first few moments, the entire thing was painfully awkward.

Elizabeth's body was tense and rigid, and the feeling of cold skin against hers only made her shiver even more. Her heart was beating so fast she was positive he could hear it - if not feel it - and she felt like a complete fool for following through with this idea.

She rolled her eyes, wondering if Cameron thought her a fool or a floozy. She wouldn't blame him for either one.

"Hey," he whispered, clearly trying to lighten the mood. "It's alright. I promise to keep my hands to myself."

She smiled back, but her head was buried against his shoulder so she doubted he could see it. "How do you know that I'll keep _my_ hands to myself?"

"I won't lie, if you feel the need to accost me in the middle of the night, I'm willing to put up with it."

She barked a laugh, a bit of the tension leaving her body. She shifted her weight so that she settled a bit more on top of him, one of her legs scissoring between his. The wet material of her bra clung to her curves, and she tugged the sleeping bag up around them, covering up both bodies from sight. As the fire crackled and their bodies slowly started to warm, Elizabeth forced herself to take a calming breath and relax a little more.

"How you doing?" Elizabeth breathed. "You getting warmer yet?"

"You know, in a situation like this," he began, and she blithely tried to ignore the low timber of his voice near her ear in favor of the fact that his teeth had finally stopped chattering. "You really don't have to ask a guy that."

She smacked his shoulders lightly. "Not funny."

She _felt_ him smirk. "Who says I was joking?"

"But," she began dimly, "this isn't so bad, is it?"

Cameron sneezed, her whole body feeling the force of it. "Yeah," he muttered as he sank back and pulled her tighter. "Not bad."

Silence settled in, and as his arm slowly snaked completely around her waist and pressed her body close, she curled around him and felt every one of his shivers.

"Go to sleep, Cameron," she whispered. "We should rest until the rain passes."

She wasn't positive, but she thought she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head before he mumbled an agreement. It wasn't long after that that his breathing evened out and Elizabeth realized he had fallen fast asleep. She stayed awake for a while, staring distantly into the sparkling crackle of the fire.

It was hard to ignore the feeling of the strong, toned muscles beneath hers, particularly since it had been a long time since she'd enjoyed touching a man - Cameron's kiss notwithstanding. The feeling she had right now, though - it wasn't sexual, not entirely, anyway. Instead, oddly, she felt safe and secure, cocooned in the arms of a good man.

And he was a good man, there was no denying that.

She breathed in Cameron; the scent of his musk mixed in with the perfume of fresh rain, and closed her eyes. In some dark corner of her mind Elizabeth admitted to herself that she could fall for this man so easily, if she only let herself. If she was completely honest, she couldn't say that the process hadn't already begun. She doubted that she would have so easily offered body warmth to just any Tom, Dick, or Harry.

The only thing that marked Cameron off-limits was the fact that some time ago Elizabeth had made a deal with herself to mark _all_ men off-limits. Elizabeth was suddenly beginning to wonder whether that had been the wisest decision. Things were always complicated in her life – a thousand issues to take into account and deal with, compromise over, sacrifice for… but in that moment, everything suddenly felt incredibly straightforward and simple.

She fell asleep to the rise and fall of Cameron's chest underneath hers and, for the first time in weeks, Elizabeth slept peacefully.

\--x--


	3. Chapter 3

\--x--

When Elizabeth first stirred awake after a couple of hours, the sound of rain gently smattering down against the roof overhead was the only thing she acknowledged. It took her a few minutes to even remember Cameron, but in her defense, sleep had been a luxury for the last few weeks and she had always been a heavy sleeper slow to wake. She nuzzled closer to the furnace of warmth surrounding her, feeling nothing but the vague sensation of heat and skin and comfort.

When Elizabeth slowly - _finally_ \- blinked her eyes open, she found Cameron staring up at her with a small smirk curling his lips. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” he murmured, and she was too groggy and bleary-eyed to do anything but let her head fall back against his chest. She grumbled an incoherent greeting back but Cameron was already talking over her, “Uh, Elizab--”

“Still sleepin,” she mumbled, eyes falling closed.

“Yeah, well, we‘ve only been out for about three hours, so we‘ve got some time…” his voice broke off and quickly took on an awkward tilt. “But do you mind moving for a--”

“Sleep, ‘ameron.”

He released a long-suffering breath. “Yeah… okay.”

A few hazy moments passed, and _that_ was when she registered it.

It took every shred of control Elizabeth had to resist tensing and snapping her eyes open. Instead, with the ruse of slumber still firmly in place, she kept her eyes sealed tight as the realization slowly sunk in that Cameron’s body was now, yes… sporting a hard-on.

The evidence of it was jarring, pressing against the outer edge of her left thigh. In an instant she was wide awake – startling wide away - and a thousand things flooded her mind as she furiously ran over the scenario.

He was a guy, she told herself quickly. For some guys, this was just a natural part of their morning routine and… it probably meant nothing, right?

She repressed the urge to groan - she didn’t even buy that one, especially given the fact that they were both half-naked and pressed skin to skin. Desperately she considered shifting the weight of her body off the side, sliding into the edge of the sleeping bag but Elizabeth quickly recognized that’d call too much attention. She’d rather save Cameron the embarrassment if they could both somehow extract themselves from this position with at least the illusion of ignorance in place.

The longer she thought about the possibilities, though, the more her mind froze. Despite herself her body tensed with the awareness, so she wasn’t particularly surprised when she heard Cameron expel a harsh breath that tickled her ear.

“It’s alright, Elizabeth,” he mumbled, his voice carefully controlled. “I know you… _know._ Can feel the…” he trailed off, and Elizabeth peeked to look up, finding his eyes squeezed shut in embarrassment. “You can move now, and then I can get on with killing myself.”

But she hesitated, staring at him, watching the bob of his Adam apple as he swallowed thickly when she placed a hand against his bare chest to support herself. A small kernel of recklessness flourished, and she pushed off against his torso slightly and waited until he opened his eyes and returned her gaze.

“Why did you kiss me yesterday, Cameron?” she asked softly, boldly, the question surprising even herself.

He blinked up at her, incredulous. “You’re kidding me, right? You actually have to _ask_?”

She met his gaze evenly. “Yeah, I do. Because if it was just the alcohol talking, then I need to--”

Before she could finish the sentence Cameron pushed forward and caught her lips softly with his. It wasn’t like the kiss they had shared the previous night - it didn’t have nearly the same force behind it. The touch was simple and light; a brush of lips against lips. Before she could decide on a response, he had already fallen back again. She stared at him for a breathless moment, and Elizabeth would have even gone as far as to call the kiss chaste except that she was lying half-naked on top of him.

“I’m not drunk now,” he declared.

She realized he’d shown a remarkable level of restrain considering the evidence of his desire was still all too apparent against her thigh. He hadn’t wanted to scare her - overwhelm her - like he had done the night before. The consideration was thoughtful, but as Elizabeth slowly took a moment to tame the erratic beating of her heart, she found she had no such qualms as before.

“Okay,” she whispered on a poised breath.

Cameron froze, a little uncertain as he held her stare. “Okay?”

Elizabeth slowly slipped her hand up across his chest and cupped him around the back of his neck. “Okay,” she repeated, and then went about clarifying what she meant by kissing him.

Her whole body was brought into the act as she settled chest to chest and slid her body against the length of him. She felt Cameron’s piercing groan against her lips before she even had the opportunity to slip her tongue inside his mouth, holding nothing back as her hand buried in the nape of his hair and held him to her.

This time, she was the one in control of the kiss, and it was dark and seductive and _slow_. All her favorite things.

As soon as she pulled back, Cameron’s face flittered from one indefinable expression to the next, void of any emotion she could easily put to name. There was a passing moment in which fluttered nerves turned her stomach to worms before Cameron reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes.

“You sure?” he asked softly.

Elizabeth held her breath and nodded once, and Cameron’s restraint broke. She almost lost her balance on top of him when he pushed off on his elbows. His hand threaded through her hair and he tugged her body against his, urging her to sit upright, legs falling on either side of him, straddling his body across with hers. The cover of the sleeping bag slid off her back as Cameron quickly maneuvered Elizabeth’s hips into the cradle of his.

His mouth was on hers relentlessly, demanding and inviting, tongue slipping in and toying with hers in a surge of sensation. As he crushed her to him, his hand splayed against the ground behind him, supporting them both. Heat kindled and desire spiked, and Elizabeth couldn't help but think that no one had ever kissed her like this before.

Then she felt his fingers play with the clasp of her black bra and she pulled back from the kiss, brushed her lips against his neck in an open-mouthed exploit that made him shudder.

“What’s the hurry?” she teased softly.

“No hurry,” he managed gruffly, and it was Elizabeth’s turn to repress a shiver when she heard the husky, breathless quality of his voice, thrilled with the proof that she was affecting him just as much as he was her. “Just want…” he broke off when Elizabeth nipped his skin between her teeth, and he bit back a guttural noise. “Need to see you,” he finished thickly.

He moved down to her neck, and the scrap of his two-day grown stubble against her skin made her shudder and moan. One of the straps slid off her shoulders and Cameron’s fingers hooked under the material and gradually tugged it down past her sternum, exposing her breasts, her nipples hardening against the splash of cool air. He dragged his mouth across her pulse beat and then made his way down her chest, his tongue and lips dancing over the swell of her breast before taking the weight of it into his mouth. She curved like a bow into his touch, his tongue flickering out and toying with her nipple and Elizabeth released an involuntary little whimper.

Cameron smiled against her skin. “Do that again.”

“What?”

“That noise,” he breathed darkly. “I want you to make that noise again.”

Elizabeth was about to goad him with a response of _make me_ when he did just that, his mouth moving to her other breast and closing in on the curves. Her breath hitched, whimpering his name in a voice that was barely audible, barely recognizable. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her lips parted as he finally flicked open the clasp of her bra at the back, snagging the useless material and peeling it away from her body.

It was hard for Elizabeth to care about anything else with Cameron toying with her like this. Duty, responsibility, propriety - all of those were meaningless words against the weight of the feeling looming inside of her. Not just the orgasm, but another thick swell of emotion Elizabeth recognized, accepted and feared all in one breath.

She had never been the type to cave to lust. If she let herself fall for this man, then there would be no climbing back up. Cameron would be given the ability to break her so easily, so effortlessly.

Elizabeth shouldn’t have been willing to yield that power to him, but she did it gladly.

She rocked her hips against his and Cameron‘s breath hitched and broke off with a strangled moan. Their bodies were separated by boxers and a pair of blank panties, and the stroke of his erection against her, hard and arousing, filled her with a sense of imbibed power. She rocked her hips again and the friction built as Elizabeth set a slow sway, hips rotating, grinding; the tension quickly mounting a thing that was agonizing and deviously erotic. The movement was empowering, because as she rocked, Cameron’s breathing became broken and ragged and _heavy_.

“Jesus, Elizabeth,” he breathed, voice gruff and thick with need. “That feels so… god, don’t stop.”

She simply hummed in response, lost as she continued the slow tactile sensation that was nothing more than an imitation of fucking, a teasing prelude, but it felt so good, so right. She could have easily done away with the barriers of clothing between them. It would only take a small fraction of time for her to find a way to guide Cameron inside of her, but the sensation was too overwhelming, too right. She couldn’t manage the motivation to pull away, the friction and heat climbing inside of her simply too much for Elizabeth to break pattern.

Then Cameron’s hand skimmed across her sternum and down, insinuating it between the friction of their bodies and Elizabeth cried out at the added pressure. She felt his fingers press against her modest black underwear, and the rhythm of her hips stilled involuntarily.

“No,” Cameron breathed, pleading. “Keep going. Don‘t stop.”

She nodded, overwhelmed by pleasure, but it took a full second for her to start rocking her body again, the press of his erection underneath her contrasted by the feel of Cameron’s fingers in front. He kneaded her with an open palm, working against the rhythm she set, and then his thumb pushed the material of her underwear to one side and grazed across her clit.

She cried out, but Cameron only delved deeper, feeling his way past her folds and rubbing the length of his thumb against her. He slipped his index finger inside her slick heat with one slow push and her body jerked and jolted.

“Keep moving,” Cameron echoed in a shaky voice, a voice she couldn’t deny, and Elizabeth took a shuddering breath and forced herself to continue swaying. “That’s it,” he encouraged, his voice thick and raw and so _greedy_. “Keep moving for me, keep coming for me.”

Assaulted by sensation, overwhelmed by the stroke of Cameron’s finger as he pushed in and out of her, it all built heat inside of her and she whimpered when he pushed in another finger. Her body fell forward, arms limp around his shoulders, chest to chest, as it took all her concentration and effort to maintain any movement. He held both of them upright with one hand planted flat against the ground behind him, the other working inside of her. But her body was moving with a mind of its own now, driven by touch, shifting in tension in short, jerking motions against Cameron’s hand.

“Cameron, God…” her voice broke off, body desperate for release.

“C’mon,” he whispered darkly, “come for me, babe.”

She felt her orgasm build and loom, and then shatter.

The climax swept through her like a tidal wave, shuddering waves of pleasure working through and shaking her body as it jerked in euphoria. Cameron moved to quickly catch her around the waist with his free hand, the other still buried between them, and Elizabeth wasn’t thinking - couldn’t think - when she leaned forward and put all her weight on top of him. With no support behind him anymore, Elizabeth propelled Cameron back to the ground hard, her body landing on top of his.

As she got her breathing under control, her body rode out the last of her spasms and she slowly swept a strand of her tousled hair away from her eyes and met his. She reached for the hand that was still buried between them, brushing against sticky fingers as she brought them up and threaded her fingers in between them. Her head fell against his shoulder and she took a long breath, simply needing a moment to recover.

“Do you have any idea how sexy you are?” Cameron said, and his breathing was considerably more labored than hers. “First thing I thought when I saw you--”

“What?” she cut in, and brushed a kiss across his lips. “We met in passing the first time.”

“I still knew I wanted you like this. I always knew.”

It felt like there was an admission in his words that went beyond what was spoken. She leaned down and their lips melded and locked as her body moved, drugged and heavy with euphoria, and everything felt so good, so overwhelmingly right it almost scared her. Sex or fucking wasn’t like this; not this intense.

But with Cameron? When he looked at her like that, Elizabeth knew he was different from all the other guys she had ever met.

She pulled back and brushed her thumb across his lips and Cameron took advantage of the maneuver by opening his mouth and drawing her finger in, rolling it between his tongue and teeth.

“Cameron,” she breathed, a little overwhelmed by it all, “what the hell are we doing?”

“Don‘t think,” he said simply, and laced his hand through her hair and roughly pulled her to him for a kiss that made her toes curl.

She let herself get lost in the embrace again, but she decided that Cameron had been patient long enough. Her hand skimmed past his abdomen, tracing the curves and natural lines of his muscles. He wasn’t at all like Simon. Cameron was strong and toned, and Elizabeth reveled in the feel of it and moved lower to brush kisses after the trail of her hand. Her lips skimmed his chest and Cameron groaned when she started sucking on the beads of sweat that had broken out over his body. Her hand moved lower, tugged the waistband of his boxers down and Cameron muttered something in approval and began pushing her damp panties down her ass, almost frantically.

She took her time with his boxers, though, and Cameron groaned in frustration. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

She smiled wickedly. “No, just teach you a thing or two.”

It took a bit of maneuvering but when they were both finally, blessedly, naked - skin against bare skin - Elizabeth resettled on top of him and sank down onto his shaft, slowly. Cameron’s breath hitched and he froze, his face darkened with pleasure that bordered on pain, but Elizabeth still drew it out. Letting the penetration extend, she felt the length and width of Cameron fill her senses until their hips met. When he was buried deep inside of her, she rested her hands against his chest, overwhelmed and immobile for a second.

“’Lizabeth,” Cameron whispered, half her name sounding broken, and bucked up against her hard.

The stiff penetration pushed Elizabeth into action, her muscles clenching and she pulled up and lowered back down, hands planted against his chest as she began to rock. Cameron muttered her name in a dark, dirty little voice with words like _baby_ and _need_ and _want_ and _fuck_ , and her body picked up speed in response to the tension quickly mounting in him.

Cameron’s eyes screwed shut and his breathing grew heavier and sounded more forceful than the rain pelting down from up above. She worked his body, adjusting her own to draw out choked gasps from him when she found a particular angle he craved. His hands settled on either sides of her hip, encouraging her, guiding her movement with fingers pressing into skin so hard there were going to be marks left. Elizabeth didn’t care, just wanted to watch his body descended further and harder into euphoria.

Breathing thick and heavy in the air, she watched him lose control as their bodies worked each other up to the edge, but Elizabeth suddenly didn‘t care about coming herself. She almost wanted Cameron’s release more, wanted to work pleasure through his body until he surrendered completely to her. The need was almost possessive, and if she hadn’t been caught in the throes of heat, she would have been shocked by the strength of emotion rising inside of her in response to Cameron, surprising even herself with the sheer intensity.

Her body tightened and throbbed for release, and she whimpered, sharp little noises from the back of her throat that made Cameron’s eyes slid open. When he latched onto her gaze, Elizabeth’s body almost stilled at the look that passed between them. The power she had felt in driving Cameron to his pleasure was suddenly overwhelmed by the unguarded expression held in his eyes.

Their gazes locked and the exchange between them was open and raw and powerful, and Elizabeth knew he was feeling everything as powerfully as she was.

She slanted her body, her hips rocked, and then he came, flooding her senses and pushing her own body over the edge with the rush of his release. She rode the wave of pleasure, muscles spasming and fluttering throughout her body, little tremors of ecstasy jolting and shuddering until she collapsed weakly on top of Cameron. Satiated and dazed and blissed-out, she couldn’t move and didn’t want to, settled down with Cameron still inside of her.

After several moments passed, Cameron whispered softly into her ear, “Hey, Lizzie?”

She nuzzled his neck. “Yeah?”

Whatever he was about to say, he never said it. His body suddenly tensed and he startled her when he abruptly grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her upright with him. “We’ve got company,” he declared.

Confusion spiked high and pushed aside the normal post-coital bliss. She followed Cameron’s gaze and tossed a look over her shoulder, body tensing in shock when she looked out the window and glimpsed the beam of a flashlight slicing through the rain. A man was making his way towards the shed, a shotgun in one hand.

“Worst timing ever,” Cameron muttered in aggravation, taking a quick second to kiss Elizabeth before he reached across her for his clothes and gun lying littered on the floor nearby. “We’ll continue this later.”

He stopped and actually froze to stare at her, apparently thrown by his own words, but Elizabeth got off of him, an involuntary hitch escaping her lips as he left her body. “Yeah,” she muttered in agreement, and she could have sworn she saw Cameron’s shoulders sag a little in relief. She was too busy fumbling for her own clothes, though. “But next time,” she continued, “I’d prefer if it we left the guns out of it.”

Cameron smirked at her even as the beam of the flashlight grew nearer. “Oh, c’mon. Where would be the fun in that?”

\--x--

An hour later, Elizabeth was huddled in a kitchen of a quant, two-story farmhouse about three miles away. Her hands curled around a glass of tepid cool lemonade that was bitterly sour to the taste, but she was hungry and tired and even sour lemonade tasted good. Cameron eased onto the bench seat next to her, his hand coming to rest on her knee and she didn’t brush it away as they sat in awkward silence in this unfamiliar place.

“Here we are,” Joseph Quinn offered, bustling back into the kitchen with fresh towels in his hands. “I knew they were here somewhere.”

“Thanks,” she voiced softly, flashing a smile. Her fingers curled around the terry, white cloth as she accepted the towels and exchanged a brief look with Cameron. As she quietly rose to run the towel through hair that had already started to curl dry in waves, Cameron climbed to his feet next to her.

“Really, man,” Cameron offered, “We appreciate this so much. We were in a tight bind and--”

Joseph waved it off, a little restless as he moved across the kitchen and started piling up dirty dishes from the counter and depositing them in the sink. “Don’t bother. Haven’t been many people out here lately. Don’t mind the company at all.” He waved his hands at the mess. “Obviously I wasn’t expecting it, though.”

Elizabeth smiled at him. He was a lanky, demur fellow, taller than Cameron but with a thin frame and a smile that sadly seemed stretched a little too wide across his face. He looked like he hadn’t been fed a proper meal in weeks, and from what they’d learned so far, it wasn’t surprising. The farm’s livestock had all died, taken by the plague that had swept through the county a little less than a month ago.

Elizabeth hated herself for it, but the man inspired a fierce sense of pity and sympathy almost from the second they had met. He seemed friendly and nice, but there was quiet sadness about him that leaked through in every one of his words.

“My truck is out of commission right now,” Joseph said. “But if you can get it to work, you’re more than welcome to it. I doubt I’ll be using it any time soon.”

Cameron paused, thrown by the generous offer. “You sure? We don’t want to—”

“Trust me, I ain’t gonna use the thing now.” He threw them a half-crocked smile. “But you still gotta get the thing up and running first.”

Cameron quirked a smirk back and rocked on his heels. “If you got the tools, I’ll fix it.”

Joseph nodded, and swiveled his attention to Elizabeth. “You can freshen up in the bedroom upstairs, third door on your left. There’s an adjoining bathroom. I set out some clothes that might be your size. Feel free to…” he trailed off, shrugging awkwardly.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth replied, and then paused, unsure of how to approach the subject that had been lingering in her head. “Joseph, do you have… Are you here alone?”

On the walk over here, Elizabeth and Cameron had both taken special note of the unmarked graves that resided at the edge of the hill nearby. Joseph hadn’t offered, and they hadn’t asked yet, but it was obvious that he had lost loved-ones recently. Still, it seemed like a question she had to ask otherwise it’d remain awkward, the unspoken question glowering over them as they quietly moved about the house.

Lifting his head briefly to meet her eyes, Joseph expelled a tense exhale and turned away. “I lost my family three weeks ago. My brother, his wife and my two nieces.”

“The plague?” she breathed softly.

Joseph grimaced, a pinched expression fluttering across his face as he closed his eyes against the haunting memory. “At first,” he whispered in a pained voice, “they just seemed like they had the flu. Then they just--”

“I know, man,” Cameron cut in, sparing him from expanding on the details. “I was off-world when I got hit with the plague. Nearly killed me until the Orii decided they'd proven their point.”

Joseph’s eyes snapped open and widened, turning to him. “Off-world?”

Cameron froze like a deer caught in headlights, but there was no retracting the statement now. Not without raising suspicion from a man they desperately needed help from. The SGC had long ago been disclosed to the public just days prior to when the Orii Battleships had first shown up, hovering over Earth's atmosphere. During that window, the world had been shocked and overwhelmed to learn of the existence of extra-terrestrials and a government program that explored the far reaches of the universe. Elizabeth hadn't been on Earth during the initial press conference jointly issued by the IOA and the American government, but she could have imagined the shellshock that had rippled through the world.

None of it, of course, had remotely prepared the masses for the arrival of the Orii.

Cameron threw Elizabeth a sheepish look as he answered, “Yeah, I... used to work for the SGC.”

Joseph shut the mouth that was hanging open. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Good question,” Cameron replied. “There’s--”

For some reason, Elizabeth felt compelled to step in. “—No good answer to that, really.” she finished smoothly, offering a smile. “It’s just one of those things, you know?”

Joseph paused, staring between the two. Then he turned back to Cameron. “You were infected with the plague? Only the believers ever heal.”

Cameron raised a protesting hand. “Now wait just a minute. I’d die before I become one of their followers. Damn Orii can hit me with their--”

“Cameron,” Elizabeth said quietly.

“No, I’m just saying,” Cameron spoke over her, “You ever hear the words “Hollowed are the Orii” come out of my mouth in anything but sarcasm, put a bullet between my eyes--”

“Cameron,” Elizabeth warned. “That’s enough.”

Cameron stopped short, realizing that Joseph’s body had tensed all over and he looked dangerously pale. Cameron’s demeanor softened immediately, and he offered a sheepish shrug, “I didn’t mean to get all riled up and upset you.” Joseph just cleared his throat, swiveled back to the sink and quietly turned the faucet on. Cameron winced, and tried again, “I’m sorry for your loss, Joe.”

Joseph simply nodded, his eyes fixed on the dirty dishes in front of him. “You guys should clean up,” he suggested softly.

Elizabeth traded a brief look with Cameron before they quietly left the kitchen and went up the stairs.

\--x--

She showered and changed into the dry set of clothes Joseph had left out for her – a small green t-shirt that left a small sliver of her belly exposed, and a pair of jeans the hugged her hips a little too tightly. She squeezed into the clothes and stared at her reflection with a critical eye.

Walking into the room behind her, Cameron stopped, stared and grinned wolfishly.

“Don’t say one word,” Elizabeth warned. The clothes didn’t make her feel younger. They made her feel older.

He simply let his gaze wander up and down her body once, and then, when he finally noticed the death-glare she was sending his way, threw his hands up in the air and quietly walked across the room. He dropped his own set of clothes onto the mattress, unfolded a large sweatshirt from the pile and tossed it to her. She caught it deftly and smiled up at him.

“I’m an old fashioned kind of guy,” Cameron countered before she could respond. “If anyone is gonna be ogling your body, I figure it should only be me.”

“Oh, ha ha.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes as she pulled the sweatshirt over her head, the material dropping down and flooding her to nearly the knees.

She surveyed herself in the mirror for a second and then turned around to find Cameron sweeping a curious gaze around the place while he fingered a small porcelain figurine on the bookshelf near the front door.

The bedroom was modestly decorated with a light green floral pattern and few quaint knickknacks situated here and there. It was a charming setup, but Elizabeth couldn’t get over the awkward feeling that the true owner of this room – and the clothes she wore - was one of the dead family members Joseph had spoken of. The thought inspired the very real and visceral feeling of nausea, but Elizabeth tried to push it aside.

“Nice place,” Cameron offered.

Elizabeth made a noncommittal noise.

He tugged off his shirt and quickly threw it in a pile on the floor along with his wet socks. “You know, this could have worked out a whole lot worse.”

Elizabeth didn’t want to think about that. “Let’s just hope you can get his truck to work.”

He nodded, and caught Elizabeth staring at him when he started to tug off his pants. He grinned at her, but before he could voice any suggestions, Elizabeth turned back to the mirror and self-consciously tugged at the edges of her sweatshirt.

She took a steadying breath and told herself that it didn’t matter that she still craved Cameron’s touch as much as she had that morning; the environment was different now. She wouldn’t feel right about starting something with him in a house that was this… empty and lifeless.

She could tell Cameron’s mind was headed in another direction, however. “You know,” Cameron began.

She shook her head. “Cameron, uh-uh. Not here.”

“You’ve got an ego on you, woman,” he teased. “How do you know I was going to suggest something lewd?” She merely arched an eyebrow at him through the reflection of the mirror, and he caved within a second as his shoulders dropped. “Okay, so maybe I was. But I can think about other things besides sex with you, you know. Not often, but it happens. Sometimes. Rarely." He paused. "There were was that time where I was asleep."

She barked a laugh, and shook her head again. “Joseph already came close to walking in on us making love once. I don’t want to risk a second chance.”

There was a lapse of silence, and then Cameron repeated softly, "Making love." There was a smile on his face as he said it - one that was content and just a little bit smug. Elizabeth flushed as her eyes dropped to hemline of her sweatshirt, brushing away imaginary lint. Behind her, Cameron's voice dropped suggestively and the sound of it carried across the room. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to join in me in the shower, then? No interruptions there.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, and she couldn't deny that she was tempted - sourly tempted - to take him up on that offer. "I just came from a shower," she countered weakly.

"Yeah," he said softly, and she wondered if Cameron had taken time to perfect his bedroom voice or if it was a natural ability. "But you can always take another."

She turned around and met the dark tint of Cameron’s gaze, and for a moment the image of him pressing her hard against the shower wall flashed across her mind, warming her body. She could almost taste the water on her lips already, but… she shook her head fractionally and broke the gaze. There was something about this place, this house, the haunting look in Joseph's eyes, that tied her stomach in knots and she just didn’t feet right about it. It'd be too much like making love in a place of death, and her body reacted to the thought by rolling her stomach unpleasantly.

A hint of bile rose in the back of her throat, and she forcefully cleared it with a gruff, unattractive cough.

"Not here," she exhaled sharply, voice falling as she cleared her throat and dropped to the edge of the mattress. "I'll make it up to you later?"

She heard him sigh dramatically. "Alright, I suppose I could take that." He grabbed the towel and the spare pair of clothes, a smirk curling his lips as he backtracked into the bathroom. "But you know where to find me if you change your mind."

Elizabeth pressed a hand against her stomach, and took a deep, calming breath.

\--x--

Elizabeth listened to the sounds of the shower as she stared blankly out the window. The view of rain drizzling down on acres of farmland was a hypnotizing sight and she pressed her palm against the cool glass pane and watched the heat of her skin spread fog across the window.

The house was quiet and still - too quiet and still, for Elizabeth’s taste - and she grew restless when she took into account that she'd have nothing to do for the rest of the day. At least Cameron could keep himself busy by working on Joseph's truck in the back garage. Elizabeth had nothing to look forward to except puttering around in this house. This house, that was just entirely empty, sad and void of--

The weight of a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head interrupted her thoughts midstream. "Don't say a word," Joseph whispered in a dark warning. "Your boyfriend in the shower?"

Elizabeth found use of her voice, faint though it was. "What are you doing, Joseph?"

"Unbelievers must be purged," he whispered from behind, and Elizabeth's blood ran ice with instant comprehension. "I cannot allow you to--"

"I don't believe this," Elizabeth breathed, eyes widening in repulsion. "I thought you lost your family to the Orii!"

"Shh!" Joseph replied, pressing the barrel further against the base of her skull. Elizabeth’s mouth clamped shut, her heart beating so erratically it felt like it was jumping up in her throat. "Keep your voice down." He paused. "And, yes, the teachings of the Orii came at a great price, so I know better now than to question them."

"They killed your family."

"Unbelievers must be purged or they will infect others," Joseph insisted, and Elizabeth sensed his earlier quiet demeanor mutate into something ugly and unrecognizable as he continued to speak. "Don't you see? It was convert or die. That's the only reason I'm alive today!"

Elizabeth reasoned darkly that he wasn't living much of a life, but kept it to herself. "Don't do this, Joseph. You're a good person."

"I don't know what I am anymore, but I didn't die for my family's sins, and I won't die for yours."

Elizabeth realized she couldn't talk reason to a man when she wasn't facing him. "Joseph, please," she said, and began to move.

"Don't!"

“I’m just going to turn around,” Elizabeth breathed softly, calmly. “That’s all. That’s it. I‘ll do it slowly.”

She gave Joseph a split-second to protest, and when he didn’t she slowly turned on her heels until she faced the barrel end of his shotgun. He didn't pull the trigger, but the gun trembled in his hands so violently that Elizabeth feared for a second that he might pull the trigger completely by accident. She took a deep breath, swallowed the fear and looked beyond the gun. Joseph's face was in a sheen of sweat and indecision.

She could talk him out of this.

She had to.

"Joseph," she began, "Just because the Orii killed your family doesn't make them Gods. Fear is not religion--"

"It'll be the path to my salvation!" Joseph cut in, shaking his head in denial. "I have seen what they can do--"

"So have I," Elizabeth countered. "And I'm not impressed. They use fear to control the masses. That's nothing new. The Orii aren't gods. They're just glorified bullies." Her eyes grew firm and unyielding. "And we can fight bullies, Joseph."

Joseph barked a laugh that was slightly hysterical. "You can't fight the Orii."

She held his gaze. "Watch us."

The determination infused in her words made Joseph still for a second, a glimpse of uncertainty peeking through as he shifted on the balls of his feet restlessly. He shook his head fractionally. "How do you fight a plague? How do you fight death and magic and…" he broke off, and his eyes hardened, traveling the length of her and settling on her face. "You don't even know what you're talking about. Look at you. You're all pale and sweating."

Elizabeth froze for a second, and squared her shoulders. "You have a shotgun aimed at my forehead," she countered slowly, pointedly. "Fear is a natural reaction, but I won't let it rule my life. That's the difference between the person holding the gun and the person staring it in the face.”

Joseph gave her a twisted smile. "No, Elizabeth. Don't you get it? Your words are meaningless. You've already been marked an unbeliever."

He tensed for a second, and then stepped back, unexpectedly dropping the aim of his shotgun to level it at the floor. In the slow second that followed Elizabeth stared at Joseph in growing confusion, but then Cameron's stealthy emergence from the bathroom behind him caught her attention.

"There's no need for me to kill you,” Joseph said. “You’re already--"

Cameron slammed the butt of his own gun against the base of Joseph's neck, and Joseph went down like a ton of bricks.

Elizabeth did nothing but stare in paralysis, because it was in that moment that realization dawned on her like a flash of lightning. She staggered back against the window with the weight of it.

Cameron threw her a worried look. "You all right? I heard your voice when I was in the show--" he reached for her, but Elizabeth pulled violently away from his grasp before he could reach her. "Elizabeth, what's wrong?"

God, how could she have been such a fool? All the initial signs had been there.

"Cameron," Elizabeth breathed, and her stomach rolled unpleasantly as if to confirm her suspicions. She locked gazes with him, eyes wide with horror. "I think I've been infected with the plague."

\--x--


	4. Chapter 4

\--x--

Strangely, Elizabeth bypassed denial altogether and headed straight for acceptance without any pit stop in between. The first few symptoms of the plague showed themselves in the initial hours with mild symptoms like hot flashes, palpitations and nausea.

Elizabeth had all of them.

Cameron wasn‘t following her logic as quickly. “No.” He shook his head adamently. “You’re wrong.” He tried to reach for her again, but Elizabeth recoiled and then brushed passed him, escaping to the other end of the bedroom to lean heavily against an oak chest. “Elizabeth, come here--”

“Don’t touch me, Cameron,” she breathed sharply, palms flat against the polished wood surface. “You could get infected.”

“Okay, calm down.”

“I am calm,” she countered roughly.

But her mind was racing, battling with the onslaught of all the statistics, experiments and reports that had come across her authority in the last few months. All of them spelled certain death to anyone infected unless they were saved by the hand of an Orii priest. Within hours, she’d be delirious, fatigue-stricken and suffering hallucinations. After that, within the next day or two, she’d be comatose and swiftly die. Those were the things that flashed across her mind in a microsecond.

“You shouldn’t touch me,“ she repeated mindlessly. “You could get infected.”

He shook his head and tried for a soothing tone, “You aren't infected, and even if you were, the plague isn’t passed by touch.”

“We don’t know that.” She wasn't sure which point she was arguing.

They knew precious little about how the Orii plague worked. Transmitted through air, touch, bodily fluids, or from damn mosquito bites - there was never any common denominator found that singled out a method of transmitting the plague. One person could get it while the next man over wouldn’t. It was just a matter of time before everyone in the population became infected, though. The longer the exposure, the closer you got to the certainty of infection.

“We don’t know you’re infected,” Cameron countered, but his voice was too even, too controlled.

Elizabeth turned her eyes upwards to him and caught the vaguest, tiniest shred of alarm in his eyes. It was small, almost hidden, but Elizabeth saw it and felt her eyes sting. She blinked forcefully, took a drawn-out breath and tried to salvage her composure.

She couldn’t let her emotions run unchecked.

She had to think.

“You should leave,” Elizabeth said, eyes locking with Cameron. “Leave now--”

“No,” Cameron cut in, his voice hardening. “Jesus Christ, Elizabeth, listen to me. Everything’s going to be alright. You just have to take a moment to think, and stop talking like you’re already--”

“Cameron, I’m infected!”

“We don’t know that!” Cameron screamed back, voice rising to match hers. He waved a hand towards the unconscious man on the floor. “We’re going to take the crazy man’s word for it?!”

“He saw his entire family die from the plague,” Elizabeth pointed out. “So, yeah, maybe he knows what he’s talk--”

“The guy’s a nut job! For all we know, he _killed_ his family!”

“Cameron, stop it!” Her voice went high and broke, her throat going raw and then she felt the nausea that she had been fighting against all this time win over.

Her hand flew to her mouth and she made a break for the bathroom rushing past Cameron. She spilled the contents of her MRE breakfast over the rim of the toilet, knees braced against tiles and her eyes stinging from the force of the heaves. Acutely aware of Cameron approaching her from behind, Elizabeth’s eyes watered and she waved him back frantically, forcing him to keep his distance with guttural, distracted pleas between heaves.

When it was finally over, Elizabeth felt a surge of emotion overwhelm her.

“You threw up because you’re panicking,” Cameron argued, standing awkwardly in the doorway. “That’s all.”

She slumped back against the wooden cabinets on the floor of the bathroom, letting the indignity and horror of the situation register for just one moment - just one - and then she told herself to grow calm and rational. She could deal with this. She had to. Elizabeth had been at the brink of certain death a number of times before and she’d grown used to thinking about logistics under impossible situations.

This was no different.

Calmly as she could manage, Elizabeth climbed to her feet and steadied herself as she walked over to the sink. She brought up palm-fulls of tepid cool water and rinsed out her mouth, and then splashed her face with trembling hands. In the mirror, Elizabeth was aware that Cameron was watching her intently; he looked nakedly caught between a desire to comfort her and her pleas to leave her alone. Elizabeth didn’t envy him.

“Tie up Joseph,” she managed calmly. “Go out back and fix the truck. That’ll take you, what, an hour? Two?” Cameron didn‘t answer. He just continued to stare at her with a pinched, anxious expression on his face. “Cameron,” she goaded forcefully. “How long will it take you to--”

“Two hours, tops,” he quickly responded. “I already know what’s wrong with it.”

She nodded and reached for a hand-towel, unable to hold eye contact with Cameron through the mirror for any length of time. “The symptoms develop fast, right? If I’m infected, we’ll know for sure in two hours.” Cameron was silent for too long, but she didn’t want to look him in the face; it was too much, Too raw. Except her eyes slowly returned to the mirror on their own accord. When she saw him step forward, her body cringed and her voice broke, “Cameron, please, just…”

“Lizzie…”

She cleared her throat and turned around to meet his eyes, voice hardening, “Just do what I ask.”

 

\--x--

Two hours later, there was no denying it.

The symptoms swiftly progressed until she was pale and weak, leaning heavily for support against the doorframe as she watched Cameron key the ignition and finally get the engine to turn over. Her eyesight turned hazy and glazed, but she forced herself to remain standing on weak legs when Cameron climbed out of the truck and approached her through the heavy outpouring of rain.

His body was tense - all hard and angry lines that spoke of a stubbornness she didn‘t want to face. She knew she didn’t have to make half her case anymore. She was infected. That much had been glaringly obvious since the fever had broken out over an hour ago.

Now for the hard part.

“Cameron,” she said softly, and he halted with feet planted on wet, muddy grass. “You need to leave.”

He shook his head firmly and his voice carried over the rain. “No.”

Damn stubborn man. “Cameron--”

“No, Elizabeth,” he cut in, his voice brokering no argument. “I am not leaving you, especially like this. I‘ve fixed the truck. We‘ll head to Chicago and there Carson can--”

“Can what?” Elizabeth interrupted, resting her head against the wooden frame of the door, eyes sliding shut with frustration and fatigue. Her voice dropped so low that she wasn‘t even sure Cameron could hear her anymore. “Can watch me die?”

He heard her just fine. “You won’t die.”

“Carson can’t heal me,” Elizabeth countered, eyes snapping open. “The Orii won‘t have to attack us, Cam. I‘ll bring the plague to the Resistance myself.”

“Hell, you ever consider that at this point I might be a threat to them, too?”

Elizabeth threw him a dark look. Was he really so dead-set on staying with her? “You’re not symptomatic, Cameron.”

“Not yet, but I’ve been exposed to everything you have and I’ve been around you all day.” His face grew dark. “Hell, I made love to you this morning.”

She flinched and turned away, the words striking a harsh cord with her. She retreated back into the house, walking through the white-walled corridor as Cameron quickly followed on her heels. When she stopped in the family room, she swiveled around and watched as he ran a hand through his sopping wet hair, shaking off droplets of water that fell onto his shoulders.

“Don’t do this, Cameron,” she pleaded. “Don’t make this any harder--”

“What do you want me to do?” Cameron demanded. “Do you want me to abandon you? Because that’ll never happen. We don’t leave a man behind.”

Elizabeth didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Is that why you’re doing this? A code of honor?”

He stared at her with dark eyes that said entirely too much. “You know exactly why I’m doing this, Lizzie.”

“Stop calling me that,” she muttered.

There wasn’t any hint of force behind the reprimand, though. Hadn’t been for a while. Truth be told, she liked it when he called her that now. Damn it. This would have been so much easier if she hadn’t slept with him this morning. Her eyes fluttered shut briefly, she exhaled sharply and when she looked back at him again, she tried to imagine that it was someone else - anyone else - in his place. The arguments she had been collecting for the last two hours were catalogued in her head and brought to the forefront.

“You know I’m right about this.”

“You may be confusing me with a smarter man.”

“What about our people?”

Cameron shook his head. “They’ll manage.”

“Really?” Elizabeth said, eyebrow arched. “Without me, without you, without SG-1 or John and Rodney. Without--”

“They’ll manage somehow,” Cameron said. “You shouldn’t underestimate our people.”

“I’m not, but I said it to you before: Right now, you have the most important job in the Resistance. You’re the man in charge, whether you like it or not.” He opened his mouth to intervene but Elizabeth didn‘t let him get in a word edgewise. “If the situation was reversed,” she managed, “I’d leave you.”

Cameron froze as soon as the declaration had fallen from her lips, and then he retreated a step and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes,” she countered softly. “I would.”

She would hate herself for it for the rest of her life, but Elizabeth would put her people above everything else - including any one man and above all of her own desires and wishes. She’d made such decisions before in the past. It made her a horrible friend, but a good leader. In the very end, that was what mattered.

“I would leave you because it’s the right thing to do,” she said softly, honestly, hoping he wouldn’t hate her for it. But maybe hating her right now wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it got him out of here? “Our people need a leader. You know that, Cameron. Our responsibilities always come first.”

“Fuck our responsibilities,” Cameron spat out and advanced on her but Elizabeth flinched again, hand rising in warning to wave him off. She wanted to keep her distance, still profoundly paranoid that any contact would spread the infection. Cameron released a small groan of frustration and then he turned away, quickly starting to pace the length of the room. “I’m not leaving you here to die.”

“Then you’re sentencing our people to death,” Elizabeth countered, and her eyes tracked his restless movement. Back and forth. Back and forth. “And for what? To hold my hand while I waste away? So you can die next? Who’s gonna fight the Orii then? How many people are gonna die because you don‘t want--”

“Shut up!” Cameron cut in. “Just shut up for a second and let me think.”

“You don’t need time to think. You know the right thing to do.”

“Lizzie,” he protested.

“Cameron, if you care about me at all…” she sighed. “Then respect my wishes. Leave now. Please.”

She wasn’t sure how many more times she could say it, but mercifully, that utterance seemed to be the final straw.

He stopped pacing, and faced her with a look on his face that she would never forget even if she had another million days to live instead of just the one or two. It was open and raw, and there was something in it that hinted of an emotion that should have been impossible after only a handful of days, but there it was, staring her in the face.

For a second, Elizabeth felt overwhelmed and she didn’t care about the taboo of contact. She wanted to move forward to kiss him, needing the touch and flavor of his lips over hers.

But - thankfully, she supposed - the wind knocked the front door shut with a slam and the foolishness broke.

“Go,” she whispered softly, eyes falling shut briefly. “Please.”

“Lizzie, I…” he trailed off, defeat thickly coating his voice.

She offered him a dim smile. “I know, Cameron. I know.”

He edged back slowly, eyes holding her gaze, and then he turned around and walked away without saying a word. The door slammed shut behind him, and Elizabeth’s legs couldn’t take the weight of her body anymore. Couldn’t stand when she heard the truck’s engine start up and the roll of tires move through a slush of mud. Her knees buckled underneath her, and she heard him drive away as she crumpled into a tight ball on the ground.

Surprisingly, she didn’t cry.

 

\--x--

It took her a few minutes to pull herself together and surmount the pathetic pile on the floor she had become, but her head spun and there was a bitter taste in the back of her mouth that reminded Elizabeth that she has precious few hours left. She’d be damned if she’d spend it like this.

She rose to her feet slowly, stumbled over to the adjoining kitchen and spent a few seconds rummaging through unfamiliar drawers before she found what she was looking for. She brought the knife up and eyed the gleam of the blade as she twisted it in her hand. Elizabeth slowly made her way to the staircase and climbed to the second floor, reaching the bedroom at the end of the hall where Joseph was tied up and gagged in a chair.

He was already awake when she walked in. His dark eyes snapped up and met hers immediately, but her gaze dropped lower to his hands. They had been rubbed raw and red from futile struggles against his bounds. Elizabeth halted at the edge of the threshold and stared in.

“You were right,” she greeted softly. “I am infected.”

She crossed the parlor with her fingers curled possessively around the knife in her left hand, and Joseph’s eyes tracked it intently, the fear naked. That, she figured, was the same fear that had allowed him to survive so long and she couldn’t help it, couldn’t help not feeling anything like hatred or revulsion for this man – just pity. Naked, stinging pity for what the Orii had reduced him to.

She didn’t dangle the prospect of her knife in front of him any longer. Staggering a little, she reached him and promptly started slicing through the ropes binding his hands.

His eyes widened in shock, and she arched an eyebrow. “What?” she responded to his look. She took care to avoid any skin-on-skin contact. “I’m not going to kill you, Joseph.”

Once one loop of the rope had been cleanly sliced through, she stepped back and watched intently as Joseph hesitated for a second before he began frantically pulling himself free, unwinding the loose rings of rope. He yanked the bindings free and tugged the gag in his mouth down past his chin.

“Why did you just do that?” he muttered in disbelief as he rose. “I tried to kill you.”

She stared at him evenly. “You were right,” she said again. “I’m infected with the plague. What are you going do to me, now? Kill me?"

"I didn't think you’d let me go."

"Mercy," she replied softly, a little pity slipping into her voice. "It's a concept you're probably unfamiliar with."

She turned around, unheeding to the threat he could have easily represented to her, especially in such a weakened state. But she was too tired and weak, and his capture had become a moot point anyway. As she stumbled back to the doorway, he called to her and Elizabeth stopped reluctantly, turning her head to one side as her body leaned heavily against the doorframe.

"I'm a good man," Joseph breathed a bit desperately. He swallowed thickly, a plea springing up in his voice. "I really am, but I'm a just a man. They're… they're Gods."

Elizabeth closed her eyes, and an image of the future flashed across her mind. Earth, subservient to the will of the Orii. If there were many more like Joseph, their fates were already sealed. She shook her head and felt grief claw at her from the inside, and she became entirely unwilling to complete her turn and face Joseph.

"I know a good man when I see one," she whispered. "Right now, you don't measure up."

She walked away and crossed the hallway to the other bedroom at the end, closing the door behind her and falling into bed immediately. She crawled across the mattress, pulled the covers over herself and fell asleep within seconds of closing her eyes.

 

\--x--

Elizabeth lost track of any sense of time, drifting in and out of a hazy sleep. The first time she woke with any sort of coherency, though, her eyes fluttered opened and she was shocked to see Joseph tending to her with a damp washcloth to bring down her fever.

“What,” she began, and broke off in the a fit of coughing.

“Shh,” Joseph soothed. “Just rest, Elizabeth.”

She eyed him, trying vainly to push off on her elbows. “Why are you helping me?” she protested.

He paused for a second. “Mercy,” he answered eventually. “I thought I'd get acquainted with the concept.”

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t… might get infected.”

“I’ve tended to my entire family as they died of this thing,” Joseph responded. “I know what I’m doing.”

She wanted to protest more, but the look in his eyes stopped her. Maybe it was the delirium talking, or the fever, but he looked genuinely willing to help. Not that she was in any position to resist the offer of assistance. Elizabeth settled back against the mattress heavily, and closed her eyes.

“I really am sorry about your family,” she whispered weakly.

“So am I.”

She fell asleep again.

 

\--x--

She grew warm and fragile and sickly, and her insides felt like they were melting within her. Every time she awoke, there was another part of her body that protested and throbbed with pain, a heaviness in her limbs that settled in and lingered.

The sunlight filtered in through the window and blinded her with the intensity - harsh beams of light and suffocating heat.

“How long does this normally take, Joseph?”

His eyes were sympathetic, his tone soft. “You’ve got some time yet. Just rest.”

 

\--x--

The next time she woke, Cameron was there.

“Hey,” he greeted with one of his beautiful smiles. “How you doing?”

She mustered a smile in return, head filled with spider-webs and cotton-candy. “Knew you’d come back for me, ‘ameron.”

He froze. “Elizabeth, it’s… I’m not Cameron.”

She blinked, staring up at him. It took a few seconds for the image in front of her to blur and then refocus again, and instead of Cameron, she found Joseph looming over her.

“Oh,” she breathed weakly. “Joseph, where did Cameron go?”

He hesitated for a second, and cleared his throat. “Uh, he… he just stepped outside for a second.”

Elizabeth nodded, and fell asleep.

 

\--x--

She woke up, threw up and slept.

 

\--x--

Time bled and slowed down and picked up and she heard Teyla’s voice whispering soothingly to her, opened her eyes and saw Daniel in strange orange garbs on the other side of the room. Saw John and Teal‘c, and they were both laughing in the background.

They turned to smile at her, and she reached for them but none of them moved to reach her.

 

\--x--

“I’m here, Lizzie. I’m gonna take care of you.”

“Daddy?” she breathed, and her father was in dirty, brown fatigues. No pocket watch.

She knew she was hallucinating for sure that time.

 

\--x--

“Aye, how long has she been like this?”

“A few hours. She hasn’t woken up since…”

 

\--x--

And then the brightness flashed so intensely, it burned through her closed eyelids and danced redness across her vision. She felt free and weightless for a second, and then she was imprisoned again, in flesh and pain, settled onto a cold mattress with alien hands ghosting across her skin.

She shivered, and a glass closed over her and she realized she was being buried alive, hands pressed against coolness as she mumbled protests.

“Everything’s gonna be alright. Just sleep, babe. We’ll figure it out—”

She stared into familiar eyes. Cameron, she thought. No, not Cameron. He wasn’t here.

She slept.

 

\--x--

The memories of the previous days were the furthest thing from Elizabeth‘s mind as she stirred awake gradually, a headache registering first before any thought followed. The glare of fluorescent lighting made her wince, and as she blinked her eyes open and struggled to pull herself out of a deep haze, she found herself in an infirmary bed.

It wasn’t the first time she had woken up like that (probably wouldn’t be the last, either), but it still took her a long second to recognize the environment.

Then the memories came flooding back to her - the plague, Cameron, that quiet little house where she was dying - and Elizabeth attempted to bolt up in bed only to be rewarded with a spike of dizziness that sent her crashing back onto the mattress.

She groaned as her eyes screwed shut in exhaustion, and the sound drew attention.

“Hey there, Sleepyhead. Nice of you to join us.”

She didn’t even have to open her eyes to know who it was. Her heartbeat sped up, and the effect was echoed loudly by a nearby heart monitor that gave her away. Even with the headache pounding like a jackhammer behind her eyes, her lips attempted to curl in the best impression of a smile she could manage.

She looked up, and Cameron was sitting at the edge of her bed, a crumbled mess. He was pale and sporting a nasty, discolored bruise under his left eye. His hair was a disorderly tuff that stuck up in all direction and his stubble was probably on day three now. All in all, he was in a state that looked worse than she felt.

But in that moment, he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“Cameron,” she breathed.

He expelled a breath and years melted off his face as he smiled back in relief, his hand fumbling as he reached across for hers. “Told you everything was gonna be alright, didn’t I?”

 

\--x--

  
**Epilogue**

The Aries circled Earth twice before Elizabeth was able to move about and stand on her own two feet. She spent most of the first week in bed or a wheelchair, and even in such a weakened condition, she knew that her recovery was a bit of a miracle.

“I kept thinking on the drive to Chicago,” Cameron muttered to her that first night, curled up in a chair near her bedside, “why the hell wasn’t I infected too? I was exposed to everything you had, but I didn’t get sick. Then it struck me with a force that should have knocked my head clean off. I had already gotten the plague on P3X-453. The Orii cured me.”

“So you--”

Cameron finished her thought before she could get to it. “Lam looked for the antibodies before, but she never found anything. When I got to Chicago and regrouped with our people, I had Carson run another scan just to be sure. Except this time, he had one of those Ancient doohickeys--”

“The biometric scanners?” Elizabeth cut in.

Cameron nodded. “It took him two days to find anything, and that was only after having Radek spend the entire time combing the Ancient database for anything that could point them in the right direction.”

She shook her head. “I should have died in those two days.”

Cameron squirmed in his seat a little. “You almost did.”

Elizabeth hadn’t pressed him for the rest of the details. She knew enough. The Aries arrived in Chicago on the second day. John’s team had managed to pull off the impossible, returning with the rescued members of SG-1 and having taken down not one, but two Orii Battleships in the meantime.

The timing, as always, had been by the scrape of their teeth. They’d flown back and recovered Elizabeth, placing her in Stasis Pod just as she was slipping into a coma she should never have woken up from. She spent the better part of two weeks slumbering in suspended animation up in Aries before Carson had managed to makes heads or tails of the Ancient database and, with its help, synthesized an antidote from Cameron‘s blood. She had been the first successful test subject, but certainly not the last.

All across Earth, the cure was being spread. Millions had already died from the plague, but now millions were being saved. It wasn’t a killing blow to the Orii’s reign, but it was a step in the right direction. Though Elizabeth had a feeling the war wouldn’t tie up any faster with this so-called victory. The Orii had proven a resourceful enemy more than once.

As the days passed, Elizabeth’s recuperation quickly advanced by leaps and bounds. When she was finally allowed to leave the infirmary, even bound in a wheelchair she spent most of the time feverishly getting back into the swing of things.

Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay had an… oddly symbiotic relationship that Elizabeth didn‘t want to inspect too closely. Whatever their issues were, the combination of the two was likely going to be what they needed to salvage the broken Orii weapon. When Elizabeth had stopped by, she’d been able to splice through enough their collective scientific technobabble to understand two problems: 1.) They had no timeline on how long it would take for them to understand the basics of the malfunctioning device. 2.) Even if they figured out what was wrong with the weapon, it would take months for them to repair it using the resources they had available.

The diagnosis wasn’t as promising as she’d been hoping, but Elizabeth held her breath anyway. The impossible rarely stood as an insurmountable obstacle to these two. So, the improbable? They could do.

John agreed. “We just gotta give them some space to figure it out,” he paused, and tossed her a small grimace over the table as he took a sip from his cup of coffee. “That, and hope Carter doesn’t kill him in the meantime,” he muttered under his breath.

Elizabeth hid a smile and let her gaze wander over to the service staff across the mess hall. “I’ll just send a memo to these guys telling them that Carter’s banned from getting her hands on any citrus?”

“Probably a good idea,” John concurred with a nod, and then paused, awkwardly scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “So,” he glanced away. “You and Cameron.”

The transition was awkward and jarring, and there was a question inherent in the sentence. Elizabeth feigned ignorance. “What?” His face scrunched up in an uncomfortable expression that basically said please-don’t-make-me-say-it-out-loud. She sighed. “Alright, fine.” She took a deep breath. “Cameron and I are...”

John nodded and helped her along. “Not subtle?”

“Hey!”

“Sorry. Sorry.” He held his hands up in mock surrender, and then drummed his fingers against the table as amusement flittered across with a smirk. “It’s just… even Rodney noticed.”

Elizabeth hid a grimace. She certainly didn’t want to lie to anyone about her relationship with Cameron - it wasn’t like the IOA or the US government was around and in any position to reprimand them. When Cameron had brought up the issue days ago, she agreed with him that trying to hide their relationship was an extra headache that neither of them needed. They had enough stresses and concerns.

Still, she would have preferred if they were at least subtle.

If John was waiting for her to formulate a coherent response, Elizabeth realized he’d be waiting a long time. She wasn’t quite sure how to even begin.

John took pity on her. “Look, you don’t have to explain. I just… I just want to know one thing.”

Unknowingly, her shoulders stiffened and she braced herself, unsure of where he’d go with the question. “Alright,” she said, forcing a deep breath. “Ask away.”

He nodded, and then quirked an eyebrow as he poised, “Lizzie? Seriously?”

Her face flushed bright red and she quickly glanced away. It took her a second to recover, and then she simply arched an eyebrow back. “John?”

To his credit, he saw the response coming. “Shut up?”

“Bingo.”

All in all, people took her relationship with Cameron in stride. She had a feeling he got ribbed about it more than she did (except even Elizabeth hadn’t been able to escape some… colorful teasing from Vala). They made no pretense of their relationship, and Cameron apparently decided they should take full advantage of that fact. The day she was released from Carson’s care, he ushered Elizabeth to his room - where she discovered all her clothes neatly folded in the drawers, her laptop resting on the countertop and her medication pills waiting for her on the bedside table.

“Cameron,” Elizabeth began hesitantly when she finally found her voice. “Is this… why are all my things here?”

Cameron feigned ignorance. “Huh, I hadn’t really noticed.”

She shot him a look and refocused on the small bedroom. “Cameron, I don‘t know. Isn‘t this… a little fast?”

“I like things that go fast," he countered. "Look, the space onboard the Aries is limited so I thought--”

“They had a room for me already set up,” she protested.

“Yeah,” Cameron conceded, and dropped her bag at the foot of the bed. He turned around and offered a sheepish shrug. “Hey, I just thought it’d be easier for people to find us in case of an emergency if we were together. You know, two leaders for the price of one?”

Elizabeth crossed her arms and waited a beat.

His shoulders sagged and Cameron walked forward and circled around her, halting at the back as his arms snaked her waist. The change in tactic worked, damn it. Despite a small moment of hesitation, she couldn’t _not_ lean back against his frame, instantly feeling enveloped in an embrace that made her feel warm and safe; the smell that she had associated in her head with Cameron invading her senses. His hand came to rest on her stomach, and she covered it with her own.

“I just want you around, Lizzie,” he whispered into her ear. “Is that so bad?”

She turned her head to look back at him, and the protests she had on the tip of her tongue slowly died. She swept her gaze beyond his shoulders to the front door that led out to a ship full of people that depended on them. Depended on them to make the hard decisions. If she was smart, she'd break this off and make both of their lives simplier.

A part of her would always be anxious about the fallout of this relationship, but the silent truth was, it was already too late to turn back. Too late to pull away from Cameron.

Elizabeth shook her head, and took the plunge. “No,” she agreed softly. “Not so bad at all.”

\--x--

  
Fin.


End file.
